“The rap of the aging men”

particles, dear to the heart, hey! come pray as night falls, hey! the only thing that will help prevent suicide, hey! is the procrustean bed, hey! precarity, precarity what the fuck else should i do? what else will you demand? what will you punish me for? what else do you desire? why are you depriving me of my freedom? where are you escorting me to? what are you reproaching me for? what will you force me to do? what will you judge me for? what will you pin to me? what will you skin me alive for? where are you dragging me off to? i don’t need to go to the insane asylum take everything you can just don’t beat me, oh my god i’m so afraid of violence that I cry from powerlessness i’m a little cisgender man not sought after by anyone i’ve had one foot in the grave for a long time just hanging around like shit in an ice hole i work like a dog soon I’ll get the delirium tremens and dry up just like a crust of bread and reach the end of my rope

this is the white rap of the aging men
who don’t have any answers but have a fuck of a lot of causes
this is the white rap of the suffering men
who have glycerin drops instead of tears
this is the white rap of the hungry, mean men
who don’t have any money not even enough for cheesy bread

the motherland says don’t sweat it the motherland says relax and you don’t sweat it and you relax and, all the while, you’re being devoured by your motherland. the world is not ruled by secret lies but by manifest bullshit pass on, passerby don’t expect to asked twice around here a little meat turnover made from human meat your shoulders, your speeches are the undeniable harbingers either of sunrise or of sunset tell me, what am I guilty of? why don’t have the kind of job so that I wouldn’t have to work myself to the bone? so that the money would flow? so that people would respect me? so that my knees wouldn’t shake? and so that people would read my poems? i lived a healthy lifestyle i became godless i exercised my muscles i read Nietzsche i crushed procrastination with Marx’s Capital i worked toward acceleration with Lenin’s What is To Be Done? i thought politically my senses were poetic a physicist met a cleric and the lyric was born

this is the white rap of the aging men
who don’t have any answers but have a fuck of a lot of causes this is the white rap of the suffering men
who have glycerin drops instead of tears
this is the white rap of the hungry, mean men
who don’t have any money not even enough for cheesy bread

Text by Roman Osminkin
Translation by Jason Cieply