i am
--am i?--
yeah, i think i am
drunk drunk drunk
and signing myself up for
selective service so i
will be able to access my financial
aid and not have to cough up
almost $2,000 for one term
that me and my bank account
just really do not have, ya know?
and that little dropdown menu
well it doesn’t offer the option of:
“i am being forced to sign up for this
so i can afford college”
because i guess that sounds less
appealing than my being recruited
during lunch while i watched my fellow
(cis) male students dislocate their shoulders
doing pull ups so the older boys in uniform
would be proud of them and
maybe even give them a
nice little lanyard
because after over $100 to get
the right name and gender marker
on my id and $60 to get a new
birth certificate
i’m male enough for the government
to want to make into cannon fodder
but i’m still not male enough to
use the men’s room without the
threat of being verbally harassed
or physically assaulted
and that just makes me so angry
because here’s “bone-spurs donnie”
a known draft dodger of
at least 5 times who had the money
to pay off any doctor he wanted
trying his hardest to ban trans
people from enlisting
to fight in a war backed by a country
that wants them dead
yet that little M on my id
that i paid so much for
makes me eligible to be blown
to bits or come back to
a country that doesn’t want me anymore
with my brains scrambled from
shell shock and ptsd
because this country is willing
to pretty much force-feed young men
into the bottomless belly of the
war machine
always stoking the fires of the
military industrial complex with
money and unscarred flesh
and so much lies
and so much fear mongering
and i am just so tired
of having to fill in that
little bubble with my ballpoint
pen and a click of the mouse
pledging what could easily be the
rest of my life to being
riddled with bullets
miles away from home
just so i can grab that
financial aid
that perpetual carrot being dangled
in front of my oh so
transgender and queer nose
so i can afford an education
and not become another statistic
another person that the
united states of amerikkka
has failed