I Am No Longer Accepting This Shit (a poem)

I am no longer accepting anymore shit

By this, I do not mean I am no longer shitting
My bowel movements may not be regular
But believe me, I would much rather have them!
I may not enjoy shitting
But imagine if I had to carry
All of that shit inside me forever…

Eugh!

Nor do I mean if you give me an item
That I will not accept it, necessarily!
It may depend upon the item in question
But generally, I enjoy receiving gifts
Almost as much as I enjoy giving them
Something I may gaze at fondly and remember
There are people who still care that I exist

No, when I say I am no longer accepting shit
I mean I am no longer accepting your shit
To be fair, I am also no longer accepting my shit

I am, of course, referring metaphorically
To the mental baggage we are all carrying
The lies we tell ourselves to excuse ourselves
From those behaviors we keep repeating
And keep repeating
And keep repeating
And keep repeating
And keep repeating
And keep repeating
And keep repeating
Like we're all stuck in a time loop
But nobody told the gods damned time loop!
So everyone is watching you do this
To yourself and to those around you
Over and over and over and…

Well, you probably get the idea

I am no longer accepting that shit
Not from the people around me
Who keep hurting the people I love and me too
And most especially not from myself
Who keeps hurting the people I love and me too

Not from politicians who lie and lie and lie
Who spend our tax dollars to fight their wars
While we watch people die and die and die
Unwanted, unasked for, and on our dime

They will excuse it, of course
Call the so-called enemy bad people
Say the leader is a dictator or something
All so their buddies can swoop in
To steal all the oil, platinum, lithium…
Well, we all know how that story goes
Our history books tell us often enough

The people who run my country
Have never been particularly good people
Oh, the propaganda will tell you otherwise
But a lot of them owned many, many slaves, guys
Indigenous graves lines trails long erased
How many massacres and genocides are not faced?

It infuriates me when that fictional enemy
Is our own citizens, my fellow countrymen
And I have to hear of people I know killed
Or on streets I have walked down before
Or hear the shots tear through my heart
While I am washing dishes in my kitchen
Because the enemy our government fights most
Is the people who live inside it's borders

The Indigenous, Black, Mexican, Latino
Autistic, LGBTQ, Muslim, disabled
The list goes on for too long, doesn't it?
And I don't even know where to finish it

Hey, none of us should exist to them, right?
Unless we keep our heads down, out of sight
Unless we keep our mouths shut, zipped up tight
Unless it turned out we're useful, quiet, and bright
But if we start to get wise, they turn out our light

I am no longer accepting that shit either
I am no longer accepting the shit of people
Who apologize for this rampant injustice
Who worship at the alter of inequality
Because the people who are perpetrating it
Are the rich and the social elite
Who have always given we the people
All this shit of theirs to deal with

We deal with their daddy issues
We deal with their mommy issues
We deal with whatever their dick issues
We deal with their suicidal society ideation
We deal with the entirety of their shit

But I am no longer accepting anymore shit
We all need to take responsibility for our shit
I need to take responsibility for my own
You need to take responsibility for yours
The rich and social elite need to start carrying theirs
The rest of us need to make that clear to them

This cycle that keeps cycling and cycling
On an endless repeating cycle that recycles
Needs to be permanently disrupted

And so, I am no longer accepting anymore shit
Kindly deal with it yourself, no thank you
I have more than enough to deal with on my own