Russell Jaffe

CIVIL COPING MECHANISM FOR WHEN YOU REALIZE

Everything is shrouded in mystery
And what happened next you would not believe.

Sometimes you
Ask for help
On Facebook.
Or want to.

Everything must be a commodity.
Feel your fingers pulling down across your face.
See the acrylic on the canvas.
Everything must be a commodity.

Like a bullet into the body, and then a cyst around the bullet,
Facebook has become a part of the consciousness. Not another world
, But an oft-untapped part actualized.
Like a finger into the pre-industrial wound to fetch that bullet

, Things really were simpler. There was a wilder time undocumented.
It was easier to be, if you were privileged. Maybe the best people can do is
The assembly line.
Convenience, the enemy of joy. Judgment, the unmoving stone peopling the flow, getting
Mossy.
Entertainment, the hamster wheel of complacency. And how we train it.

When you do things right,
Everything blows up at once
, Exactly like when everything
Goes wrong.

Russell Jaffe is the editor of TL;DR magazine, teaches at Loyola University in Chicago and Fusion Academy in Oak Brook, and stars in literary study guides for Course Hero. He is the author of the poetry collections This Super Doom I Aver (Poets Democracy, '12), INTROVERT//EXTROVERT (Punk Hostage Press, '14), LA CROIX WATER (Damask, '16), and Civil Coping Mechanisms (Civil Coping Mechanisms, '17). Russell Jaffe: a zone radio.