THIS IS A RANT

Posted by Minni |0 comments

I'm not gonna lie, I'm posting this so I can just rant about everything that is really annoying me right now. SO it's finals week, and I'm pretty stressed out because first and foremost, I'd like to get out the fact that I ABSOLUTELY HATE THE MIDWEST and I feel like I'm in some kind of gray prison where people are either apathetic or just clueless to what is going on. I feel like a little wildflower in a bowl of bread dough....I will never fit in here. THEREFORE I feel even more pressure to get good grades so I can get OUT. With that in mind, I will continue:
I feel that here in the midwest (or maybe it's just Oakland University) people around my age especially, are not driven, they sort of loiter around like zombies and hardly question their surroundings, the past, the present, politics, religion....accepting what is given to them so they can get drunk of the weekends and engage in activies that just make me feel like my brain is dripping out of my ears when I join them. Too many girls I know are so obsessed with chasing boys and basing their self-values on whether or not guys think they're hot and forget how to think critically, forget why they're in college in the first place, forget that it is a privilage to even BE in college so they do just enough to get by.
I'm not even going into politics. It makes me sick to see what's happening in our country right now. The flag should be hanging upsidedown, it's ridiculous.
Religion? WELL I used to be a christian until I realized that they are mostly hypocrites who say on thing and do the opposite. Jesus said to turn the other cheek yet I have yet to see peace in the most conservative christian nations of the world. They have a pope who was once a nazi. And all this greed, this capitalism: christianty, people, is rather a socialistic religion....and the shit that's done in the name of the bible. I cringe at the thought of what is done in the name of christiany and so I can no longer say I am a christian,"hell"....I do NOT BELIEVE IN HEAVEN OR HELL. I am a good person, and do good on my own accord, not to earn myself a ticket to heaven. Additionally, how can people say they follow the bible and then go fuck someone they hardly know, or go steal from someone or cheat on a test? When I die, whether or not there is a god, whether there is a heaven or a hell, I will know I did as I felt was right, in my study of variuos religion I have found common themes: do good to yourself and others, don't kill, steal, etc...and so I find that is fine to live by. I refuse to aspire to what this society frames is "happiness" or "good":the suburbs, marriage, kids......church. I see beyond that, I think, and I find that my critical thought makes me a threat to the status quo....so I feel left out sometimes...well this is one time it feels great to be left out. I will probably never get married, I will never have children, but I will do what I can for my country and the world. See, many people today are confusing patriotism with nationalism, with christianity: I AM A PATRIOT, I LOVE the USA, I love it so much that I dont like to see what's happening to it right now, how foreign countires look at us because we have a dishrag for a president.

ANYWAY, this sums up how I feel:


Something in the way of things, Something that will quit and won't start
Something you know but can't standCan't know get along with
Like deathRiding on top of the car peering through the windshield for his cue
Something entirely fictitious and trueThat creeps across your path hallowing your evil ways
Like they were yourself passing yourself not smiling
The dead guy you saw me talking to is your boss
I tried to put a spell on him but his spirit is illiterate
I know things you know and nothing you don't know
'cept I saw something in the way of things
Something grinning at me and I wanted to know, was it funny?
Was it so funny it followed me down the street
Greeting everybody like the good humor man
But an they got the taste of good humor but no ice cream
It was like dat
Me talking across people into the houses
And not seeing the beings crowding around me with ice picks
You could see them
But they looked like important Negroes on the way to your funeral
Looked like important jiggaboos on the way to your auction
And let them chant the number and use an ivory pointer to count your teeth
Remember Steppen FetchitRemember Steppen Fetchit how we laughed
An all your Sunday school images giving flesh and giggling
With the ice pick high off his headMade ya laugh anywayI can see something in the way of our selvesI can see something in the way of our selves
That's why I say the things I do, you know it
But its something else to you
Like that jobThis morning when you got there and it was quiet
And the machines were yearning soft behind you
Yearning for that nigga to come and give up his life
Standin' there bein' dissed and broke and troubled
My mistake is I kept sayin' "that was proof that God didn't exist"
And you told me, "nah, it was proof that the devil do"
But still, its like I see something I hear things
I saw words in the white boy's lying rag said he was gonna die poor and frustrated
That them dreams walk which you 'cross town
S'gonna die from over work
There's garbage on the street that's tellin' you you ain't shit"
And you almost believe it
Broke and mistaken all the time
You know some of the words but they ain't the right ones
Your cable back on but ain't nothin' you can see
But I see something in the way of things
Something to make us stumble
Something get us drunk from noise and addicted to sadness
I see something and feel something stalking us
Like and ugly thing floating at our back calling us names
You see it and hear it too
But you say it got a right to exist just like you and if God made it
But then we got to argue
And the light gon' come down around us Even though we remember where the bank is
Remember the Negro squinting at us through the cageYou seen what I see too?
The smile that ain't a smile but teeth flying against our necks
You see something too but can't call its name
Ain't it too bad y'all said
Ain't it too bad, such a nice boy always kind to his motha
Always say good morning to everybody on his way to work
But that last time before he got locked up and hurt,
real badI seen him walkin' toward his house and he wasn't smiling
And he didn't even say hello
But I knew he'd seen somethingSomething in the way of things
that it worked on him like it do in will
And he kept marching faster and faster away from us
And never even muttered a word
Then the next day he was gone
You wanna know what
You wanna know what I'm talkin' aboutSayin' "I seen something in the way of things"
And how the boys face looked that day just before they took him away
The is? in that face and remember now,
remember all them other faces
And all the many places you've seen him or the sister with his childWandering up the streetRemember what you seen in your own mirror and didn't for a second recognizeThe face, your own face
Straining to get out from behind the glass
Open your mouth like you was gon' say somethin'
Close your eyes and remember what you saw and what it made you feel likeNow,
don't you see something else
Something cold and ugly
Not invisible but blended with the shadow criss-crossing the old man
Squatting by the drug store at the cornerWith is head resting uneasily on his folded arms
And the boy that smiled and the girl he went withAnd in my eyes too
A waving craziness splitting them into the jet stream of a black birdWit his ass on fire
Or the solomNOTness of where we go to know we gonna be happyI seen something
I've SEEN something
And you've seen it too
You've seen it too,
You just can't call it's name name
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