Advice for Your College-Age Bullies.

Don't fight back when mean girls punch you at parties.
No, no one said your name miss, especially not me.
But since when do drunk ears hear what was actually said?
Logic be damned when pride is at play.
In the same vein, don't yell back when sad girls blame you for their boyfriends being shitty.
Whether or not you knew matters not when the accuser's just so desperate.
She's a doe attacking a Grizzly, and you have to admire that sort of feigned courage, at least.
Maybe no one's ever talked her through handling these things?
But be ready for later, when truth of your genuine concern and attempted consolation are relayed out as straight bitchiness.
Stay proud of the fact you didn't ask her if she knew who else he'd been sleeping with.

Just know, it's not your job to make karma happen.
It's not your job to flawlessly navigate every social situation.
All that can be done is to make your life fun,
The very thing fighting back isn't.

Don't yell at cops as they write you fascist tickets.
Point two after a twelve hour shift was well earned.
But since when has the law stood to reason?
Apparently a uniform makes one inherently more moral than others.
But vocalizing that won't get you home to your bowl any faster.
A month and a half, per tenth of a gram is more than a ridiculous probation.
It genuinely hurts loosing your green best friend, but take to civil action.
It gets more done than calling judges assholes.
While you're in court, the pig will pull your parents outside and tell them how you work at The Gold Club,
Attempt to not loathe his guts.
When he blackmails you to quit, just spend all your new time reassuring your mom you didn't strip.
Instead of acting on the entirely warranted desire to punch him in the dick.

Because It's not your job to make karma happen.
It's not your job to flawlessly navigate every legal situation.
All that can be done is to make your life fun,
The very thing fighting back isn't.

If it took twenty years to admit insecurity's hold on your life, maybe it takes someone longer?
Assuming you're the last to learn everything makes your temper towards ignorance shorter.
There's nothing wrong with giving yourself credit for growth, it's wrong to not help other's find it in themselves.
Punching Lacy back won't teach her the futility of violence.
Nor will losing your patience with Megan teach her some girls are level-headed.
Sergeant Hoyt will enforce laws even if he sees them harmful.
And he'll hang on to his power over the public only as long as we allow him to.
Because all hurtful acts are grasping at straws, by people who've needed help all along.
It's this weird, deep-seeded need for validation through a response to a punch or a phone call or a ticket.
Any reciprocation of hostility shows, that theirs might have been acceptable all along.
And you become not a person, but their proof humanity's all wrong.

It's not your job to make karma happen.
It's not your job to flawlessly navigate every fucking situation.
All that can be done is to make your life fun,
The very thing fighting back isn't.

All that can be done is to make yourself one,
With the people who want the division.

-Grizabella

An Uncomfortable Whiskey Wednesday.

  I'm weird cause of the nostalgic drugs. I'm weird cause of your overly ecstatic hugs, and how pumped you were about lunch. I sulked in the other room, became releived by tragic news aka a new reason to excuse how uncomfortable this Whiskey Wednesday was.

-Griz

Fred, You're in a Technology Loop.

I don't wanna think the way I talk.
Today's supposed to be about help,
And I'll I've done is play on my phone, get stoned and wish you'd come home to me.
Cause I've missed you for days, about 87 or so, and it's doing no good not letting this go.
But the Instabitch holds memories meant for the world.
So I'll reflect, reassess, and try to reconnect what those moments really meant,
Without the eyes of my admirers not solving puzzles no one wanted them to get.
But technology's dull comfort is laughably present in a girl's life who resents it's existence.
You just think you're some type of Renaissance Queen.
You think you're fucking rad and the means to your ends will always be clean
So long as they're bathed in justifications for a disgusting lifestyle.
Take a shower every now and again.
The future isn't your downfall.

-Alyssa Anne

On the Self-Hatred Which Accompanies Literary Melancholy.

  I haven't written anything of consequence publicly since 2009. The shame a writer feels when silent is unconquerable. Though, amusing, since one who believes in the importance of writing does so because it's despondency's antithesis. Yet the type prone to prose parrots their parents failings, through projecting only onto art, as their only children, only negligence.

  You see, the clock is not circular but constantly stretching it's hands, always close to reaching the pen from which it could start documenting time and therefore validating it. But to dissect your ability to affect change from the lazy river in which you're cyclically floating would rile up the water a little and I'm pretty sure your hair is the most important part of today. So don't worry about it.

  Well, until you find yourself with no tether to any former you. If you happen to be someone you hate (which I'm not) then you might hate reading about yourself (which I don't think I would.) But also, if you're a person you hate (which I think I'm becoming) then maybe you should have read more about yourself as a villain (which I still won't.) From there, it's only learning to take down an adversary, and that's basically all I can do (though I really don't.)

  And when self-betterment is ruled out as enough motivation, what's left is just art. It's the desire to see beauty and point it out. I googled poetry and it spoke exclusively of intensity. And of intensity, I have no shortage. But if that intensity is satisfyingly internalized, or expressed to be consumed, which is nobler? As the tree falls in the woods, is a poetic mind within itself heard? Or is duty, to use a word that makes me laugh, to a hypothetical listener enough reason to speak?

  Recognition is a dirty word that drains us. It fuels the saddest amongst us: our celebrities, our politicians, our reality show chefs and our louder acquaintances. And recognition, our expletive, suffocates the saddest author I've ever been. Approval is not friendship as well as respect does not equal love. Documenting the things I know to show the people I love means that I want their money or their admiration, which I do. So where then, is any honor in the life of one who wants to live by helping people live as themselves?

  I can't (but I can) make myself write every day. I want someone to listen but not everyone and my head's been too globalized to grasp less. This has been the most satisfying typing I've had in forever, so there must be something here. I feel like I stumbled on a small spot of grass I used to lay on in the woods. I can lay around and sing, maybe some birds or hikers will hear a bit, but no one's being forced to. This is all I want.

  I smoke to die.

-Grizzly Goldman