Caitlin Johnstone

Jun 27, 2026

Reading by Caitlin Johnstone:

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They’re designing park benches
so that homeless people can’t sleep on them
and placing metal spikes beneath overpasses
so they can’t be used as shelter.

Jerry Seinfeld says Palestine doesn’t exist
and that sometimes socks go missing in the dryer,
wocka wocka
ha ha ha
it’s funny because it’s a witty observation
about life’s everyday little goofy goofs.

Fast food wrappers blow in the wind
like the leaves used to do.

Duct-taped gargoyles with garbage bag wings
peer down at the din of civilization
as we march over the sidewalk sleepers
to our Jobs,
stepping over dead bodies
while staring at our phones
and counting the minutes
til we can go home to our sofas
and watch wocka wocka comedians
and shovel SSRIs into our faces
from large plastic bowls
so the crushing beauty of our world
and the knowledge of our mortality
doesn’t topple us like Jenga blocks
and make us weep like open fire hydrants.

In this din they don’t want you to feel.
They don’t want you to think.
They don’t want you to hear.
They keep it all CLANG, CLANG, CLANG,
BUY, BUY, BUY,
WORK, WORK, WORK,
WOCKA, WOCKA, WOCKA,
so that you can’t feel your body.
So that you can’t hear the songs.

There’s bird song
and whale song
and heart song
and lung song.

There’s fire song
and sea song
and wind song
and tree song.

There’s ancestor song
and mountain song
and sun song
and wolf song,
and lots of others I bet;
I can’t hear any of them.

Oh, except thought song,
which blasts through my head
like a sonic homeless deterrent
in a shopping center alleyway,
and,
like them,
I have nowhere else to go.

...

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Feature image by Herzi Pinki — Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56625577

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Articles, poems, stories and thoughts by Caitlin Johnstone and Tim Foley. Everything published here will always remain free to read.

 

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