The Portable Henry Rollins

by Henry Rollins

He is the coffee, hot, steaming, filtered. You have to add stuff to it to make it taste good. Grinds your stomach, makes you jittery, wired, and tense. Bad trip, keeps you up, burns you out.

Cockroaches are your gods. You are weak. You should pray to them. They are a more perfect life-form than you. You are fucked up, with your idiotic idiosyncrasies. You have analysts, tranquilizers, you need vacations, you start wars, you commit suicide, you steal, you lie, you cheat. You are weak. You cannot survive, you are too busy hauling around that big brain of yours. You have to build jails to keep your own kind from killing you. You kill everything. You live in fear. You could never live with the simplicity and beauty of the roach. You have abortions. You engage in meaningless activity. You are weak, cockroaches are your gods. You’re not even fit to kiss the smooth belly scales of the mother roach. You are repulsed by them, you fear them. There are more of them than there are of you. You get squeamish at just the sight, they make you sick. You are weak. Cockroaches are your gods. Give up your plate of food to them. Whether you do or not, they will survive you and your stupidity. You try to kill them with gas and poison just like you do to your own kind. The roach comes back, stronger, faster, immune. You watch television, you lock your doors to protect yourself from your species. You put needles in your arms, you sell your bodies, you find new and inventive ways to mutilate yourselves and others. You are weak. Cockroaches are your gods.

I’ll never forget how the depression and loneliness felt good and bad at the same time. Still does.