I'm tired
of coffee-shop messiahs
telling me what an awful person I am. I'm

tired
of hearing the names of Third World countries
rattled off in slow,
laundry list
monotony--
one
two
three--
so I can tally all the people
who have it worse than me. I'm

even more tired
of that one special case,
whatever special case it is--
pick your country off the wheel
of poverty and join the cause of the hour.

I'm tired of trendy salvation.

Tired of
the official, Oprah Winfrey edition, one-hundred-percent-recycled-material pamphlets
covered in fair-trade coffee stains
being waved two inches from my face

while some girl who's never known hunger
tells me what utter dog**** I am.

She's right about one thing:
I don't know true desolation. But I'm

tired
of cookie-cutter, save-the-whales royalty
who think desolation smells
like the library on a saturday night.

Desolation smells
like burning flesh and **** you.

It sounds like sand and blood,

and tastes like ashes.