There was a metal band that was just called Death.

I used to think I wasn’t afraid of death, but actually what I wasn’t afraid of was being dead.

You can’t attend your own funeral, but you have to attend your own death.

You are going to die of something.

I hope I die of boredom in my sleep.

Do you ever remember being so excited about the future you were afraid you might die before it happened?

I mean, who cares, of course, democracy is dead.

Death wish, free will, cause and effect, happiness as misery.

I wonder if the wealthy dinosaurs were the last to die.

Hemingway titled a book Death in the Afternoon, which is the best possible name for a cocktail, then invented a cocktail named after it. I am extremely jealous of this whole move.

I don’t actually want to die laughing.

“Only one image of Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe has been authenticated: a watercolor portrait painted several hours after her death.”

There was 100% a culture of dead bodies are cool.

Is a beautiful woman still beautiful even if all men everywhere are dead?

Vanity ends with death.

Who wants to be present in the moment? I want to die when an asteroid hits my cryogenic chamber.

Naps, but for death.

You can’t actually sleep when you’re dead.

The secret to immortality is boredom. If you’re bored enough you’ll never die.

Die with dignity like Benjamin Guggenheim.

Death by attrition. War of natural causes.

Death has an anchoring, as in dragging-down, effect, so, don’t die.

“Sex” and “death” kind of rhyme.

You can sleep in your deathbed.

Sappho: “To die is evil. The gods think so, Else they would die.”

Cry now, die later. Move to Europe, smoke and die cool.

I want to die someday.

I don’t want to die laughing.

Elisa Gabbert

Once as a kid, I was so bored at my parents’ office that I made a deck of cards.

How bored are dogs? Pretty bored, I think.

I wonder what would bore a tortoise.

I don’t trust books that aren’t a little boring.

It’s almost like there should be different words for “boring because simple” and “boring because complex.”

You can call this banality versus tedium, or “bad boring” versus “good boring.” Kubrick movies are often great while also boring.

Whether something is boring or not has nothing to do with how good it is.

You could also call “boring because complex” interesting-boring (boring in an interesting way) or slow-interesting (interesting, but at a pace that sometimes resembles boredom).

To state the obvious, all good poetry is slow-interesting.

I often wonder why having a beverage makes something boring more interesting.

I wonder why we don’t get bored in the shower.

Michel Siffre lived alone in a cave in Texas for six months and got so bored he contemplated suicide, making it look like an accident.

I heard on the radio that lazy people have higher IQs—because their minds are more active, they don’t get bored doing nothing.

I don’t think this is true.

Some people outside are having a boring conversation about dogs in general.

When it rains it’s boring.

When it rains it bores holes into your body. Turns out it was acid rain!

Being so bored you actually start crying must be a transformative experience.

Just speaking for myself here but I love being bored.

Like to me, sex is not art. Once it’s over it’s boring again.

We’re in the bargaining stage of civilization, and it’s boring.

Civilization got bored with itself.

Pretty cool how we’ve evolved to find peace boring!

A boring man war movie.

“This is boring.” “No, it interrogates boringness!” “This is doggerel.” “No, it interrogates talent!”

What, poets can’t be bored by eclipses?

How boring not to have a crush on anyone.

You can only be bored almost to death.

Did you ever have a kiss so bad you felt like you were the bad kisser?

I think this is related to how boring people make me feel boring.

Did you know that you can trick people into being more interesting by being more interesting yourself?

I used to be bored around my parents, which made them boring. In my thirties I was shocked to learn that I didn’t know everything about them.

So if you have to spend time with boring people, try being DAZZLING.

I’m glad Andre Gregory knows the Andre character is a “raging narcissist” mansplaining bore.

My most common thought while lucid dreaming is “God, what a boring dream.”

My TED Talk topic would be “Jiro Dreams of Sushi Is Not an Enjoyable Movie.”

I would just make people watch it and stop it every now and then to say, “See? This is boring and oppressive.”

A totally fascist approach to sushi.

Execution in art has become a great tromping bore but: sorry artists, you still have to execute.

I sometimes think After Hours is the worst movie that’s anyone’s favorite movie.

I associate it strongly with Joe Versus the Volcano, since I think of both as somehow “angry boring.”

It takes a special kind of mediocrity to be offensive and boring at the same time.

I’m so over the “boring on purpose” defense.

I think I mean if the language is boring there should at least be some emotions or ideas or something.

Boring through, or thoroughly boring?

I was very boring today.

Sometimes the dystopia was boring.

At least everyone was boring at the same time about something inherently interesting.

Elisa Gabbert

Part of suffering is the useless urge to announce that you’re suffering.

There is no other way to say it: I’m suffering. Just to say “I suffer” helps.

I read somewhere, “we become lyrical when we suffer.”

Happiness is suffering for the right reasons.

First-order suffering is second-order happiness.

You have to suffer for beauty? Because you have to suffer.

We pride ourselves on a high quality of suffering.

Turgenev was born in 1818 in the Province of Orel, and suffered during his childhood from a tyrannical mother.

In the past their suffering was less absurd.

The problem is, everything’s worse. Like, paper or plastic? We’re all still going to die suffering.

I value being alone with my thoughts, but it’s weird to say, “This thing that makes us suffer less, we have to stop doing it.”

Isn’t it kind of the point of culture to assuage our feeling needless and alone?

How does one suffer “gladly,” exactly?

At least the rich get to suffer in comfort.

It makes the life feel longer. Live to suffer another day.

One’s past suffering can be a great source of comfort. A torturous luxury. Velvet upholstery.

Suffering is happiness, after forty minutes of desolate shuffling. The point is, life is suffering.

About suffering, no one is ever wrong.

Elisa Gabbert

We started without food in our mouth
They gave us pork and pig intestines
Shit you discarded that we ingested
we made the project a wave
You came back, reinvested and gentrified it
Took niggas’ sense of pride, now how that’s free?
And them people stole the soul and hit niggas with 360’s
I ain’t got a billion streams, got a billion dollars
Inflating numbers like we ’posed to be happy about this
We were praisin’ Billboard, but we were young
Now I look at Billboard like, “Is you dumb?”
To this day, Grandma ’fraid what I might say
They gon’ have to kill me, Grandmama, I’m not they slave
Check out the bizarre
Rappin’ style used by me, the H-O-V
Look at my hair free, carefree, niggas ain’t near free
Enjoy your chains, what’s your employer name with the hairpiece?
I survived the hood, can’t no Shaytan rob me
My accountant’s so good, I’m practically livin’ tax free
Factory, that’s me
Sold drugs, got away scot-free
That’s a CC, E-copy
Guilt free, still me
And expect me to not feel a way to this day
You would say y’all killed me
Sucker free, no shuckin’ me, I don’t jive turkey
Say “Happy Thanksgiving,” shit sound like a murder to me
Smoke free, all of y’all callin’ out toll free
Label rob you for millions yet you wanna put a hole in me
Sugar free, seasoned but I’m salt free
You lay a hand on Hov, my shooter shoot for free
I promise World War Three
Send a order through a hands free
Kill you in 24 hours or shorter
You can’t ignore the hand speed
On god, it’s off the head
This improv but it’s no comedy
Sign I fail? Hell nah!

JAY-Z (An excerpt from “What’s Free” by Meek Mill featuring Rick Ross & JAY-Z)

Hov did
Please, Lord forgive me for what the stove did
Nobody touched the billi’ until Hov did
How many billionaires can come from Hov crib?
I count three, me, Ye, and Rih
Bron’s a Roc boy, so four, technically
I left the dope game with my record clean
I turned the cocaína into champagne
I cleaned up la madrina with the same soap
Me and Loro talk ’bout how we slang dope
Now the weed in stores, can you believe this, Ty?
I put my hustle onto Forbes, can you believe this guy?
Then we said, “Fuck it,” took the dope public
Out the mud, they gotta face you now, you can’t make up this shit
Judge it how you judge it, say we goin’ corporate
Nah, we just corner boys with the corner office
I’m at the cap table, what the splits is?
Not that cap table, boy, we live this
Breezy what the business is
We pushin’ Fenty like Fentanyl, the shit is all legitimate
E was down ten for this
We just got his ten back then went back like, “Where the interests is?”
Em light up the O3
We let y’all do the zazas, OG for the OGs
Some new niggas out of pocket, talkin’ exotic
You barely been to the Baham—that’s another topic
Monogram in my pocket off the red carpet
You see the face I made that night, shit is that shockin’
Odds wasn’t great, we’d even be alive
Gotta be crazy to y’all niggas, we surprised
Shit is too much how we grew up
Shit don’t even feel real to us
OG sold to those, you called kingpin
If those your drug lords, then who are we then?
Hov is a real nigga’s dream
My only goal, to make a real nigga feel seen
Sometimes, it makes a fake nigga hates life
Never my intention, the consequences of my way of life
The way we used to play with life
I’m now careful with the sentences, them only jail bars I like
I never wanted to be the state custodian
The laws are draconian
For those married to the life, it’s holy matrimony and
Somehow, I’ll out-fox every box they’ll try to throw me in
With great ceremony and
Folk and ’nem told me how highly Caddy spoke of him
And bloke and ’nem from London, Harrow Road, Weston Inn
I be speakin’ to the souls of men
Those of them willin’ to die for the existence that this cold world has chose for them
Kickin’ snow off a frozen Timb
Back and forth on this turnpike, really took a toll on ’em
Lot of fallen soldiers on these roads of sin
For those who make the laws, I’ma always have smoke for them
I got lawyers like shooters
Workin’ pro bono for him as a favor ’cause I throw them Ms
In memory of Teelo
I pray none of your people die over jail phones again
All this pain from the outside, inspired all this growth within
So new planes gettin’ broken in
Highest elevation of the self
They done fucked around and gave the right niggas wealth
These ain’t songs, these are hymns ’cause I’m him
It’s the Psalm 151, this New Testament
The book of Hov
Jesus turned water to wine, for Hov, it just took a stove
You never know how this shit could go
Me and Biggs probably got too big if they ain’t book that load
Hindsight is 20/20
Though he’s gettin’ plenty money, lookin’ back now this shit is funny
I just got a million off a sync
Without riskin’ a million years tryna get it out the sink
Hov did
They said they don’t know me internationally, niggas on the road did
I see a lot of Hov in Giggs
Me and Meek could never beef, I freed that nigga from a whole bid
Hov did
Next time we have a discussion who the GOAT, you donkeys know this
Forgive me, that’s my passion talkin’
Sometimes I feel like Farrakhan talkin’ to Mike Wallace
I think y’all should keep quiet
Breaks my heart
God did

JAY-Z (A verse from “God Did” by DJ Khaled featuring Rick Ross, Lil Wayne & JAY-Z)

The phase I’m on, love, I wouldn’t believe it either
I’d be like, “JAY-Z’s a cheater,” I wouldn’t listen to reason either
All I know is E’s a felon, how is he sellin’?
Weed, the Caliva brothers, deep down, I believe you love us
Feast your eyes, the piece unique, it’s sapphire
Rappers liars, I don’t do satire
Neither I nor my wrist move mockingly
Y’all spend real money on fake watches, shockingly
They put me on lists with these niggas inexplicably
I put your mansion on my wall, are you shittin’ me?
I blew bird money, y’all talkin’ Twitter feed
We got different Saab stories, save your soliloquies
They like, “If BIG was alive, Hov wouldn’t be in his position”
If BIG had survived, y’all would have got The Commission
Hov was gon’ always be Hov
It ’twas the universe will ’cause Allah said so, and now I’m here

JAY-Z (An excerpt from “Neck & Wrist” by Pusha T featuring Pharrell Williams & JAY-Z)

Entertainment is changin’, intertwinin’ with gangsters
In the land of the killers, a sinner’s mind is a sanctum
Holy or unholy, only have one homie
Only this gun, lonely ’cause don’t anyone know me
Yet everybody just feels like they can relate
I guess words are a motherfucker, they can be great
Or they can degrade, or even worse, they can teach hate
It’s like these kids hang on every single statement we make
Like they worship us, plus all the stores ship us platinum
Now how the fuck did this metamorphosis happen?
From standin’ on corners and porches just rappin’
To havin’ a fortune, no more kissin’ ass
But then these critics crucify you, journalists try to burn you
Fans turn on you, attorneys all want a turn at you
To get they hands on every dime you have
They want you to lose your mind every time you mad
So they can try to make you out to look like a loose cannon
Any dispute won’t hesitate to produce handguns
That’s why these prosecutors wanna convict me
Strictly just to get me off of these streets quickly
But all they kids be listenin’ to me religiously
So I’m signin’ CDs while police fingerprint me
They’re for the judge’s daughter, but his grudge is against me
If I’m such a fuckin’ menace, this shit doesn’t make sense, B
It’s all political, if my music is literal
And I’m a criminal, how the fuck can I raise a little girl?
I couldn’t, I wouldn’t be fit to
You’re full of shit too, Guerrera, that was a fist that hit you!

They say music can alter moods and talk to you
Well, can it load a gun up for you and cock it too?
Well, if it can, then the next time you assault a dude
Just tell the judge it was my fault and I’ll get sued
See, what these kids do is hear about us totin’ pistols
And they wanna get one ‘cause they think the shit’s cool
Not knowin’ we really just protectin’ ourselves
We entertainers, of course the shit’s affectin’ our sales
You ignoramus, but music is reflection of self
We just explain it, and then we get our checks in the mail
It’s fucked up, ain’t it? How we can come from practically nothin’
To bein’ able to have any fuckin’ thing that we wanted
That’s why we sing for these kids who don’t have a thing
Except for a dream and a fuckin’ rap magazine
Who post pin-up pictures on they walls all day long
Idolize they favorite rappers and know all they songs
Or for anyone who’s ever been through shit in they lives
So they sit and they cry at night, wishin’ they’d die
’Til they throw on a rap record and they sit and they vibe
We’re nothin’ to you, but we’re the fuckin’ shit in they eyes
That’s why we seize the moment, try to freeze it and own it
Squeeze it and hold it ’cause we consider these minutes golden
And maybe they’ll admit it when we’re gone
Just let our spirits live on
Through our lyrics that you hear in our songs, and we can—

Eminem (Excerpts from “Sing for the Moment” by Eminem)

She died
within a week.
Over her bed
in the ICU we prayed.
We sang the body plastic.

We who loved her,
we watched her tremble,
we dabbed her dry mouth.

We waited
for her eyes
to open again.

For her to see us
holding her,

saying, it’s ok.

Danielle Badra

Hands inclined
ascending along lines where
notes fall inside a sanctuary.

Love
a nervous staccato
nearing atonement.

Leaning away
from an epic étude
she improvised cacophony
escaping into decrescendo.

Her ear
an effortless tempo
solely her own.

Her illness was graceful
as Rutter’s Requiem
yet she offered no harmony.

Danielle Badra

Before the morning chill burns off
I’m in front of my computer screen

and somebody on the internet needs me
to look at them. Working from home

is just like working in outer space, I imagine.
I go to the bathroom

just to go somewhere. I hear my neighbors
through the wall, and my heart jumps—

there are others. Their faucet runs.
They’re in there together, laughing.

I return to my workspace and my coffee needs to be reheated
again. Because my mother raised me

to outlive her, I used to stand in another room,
away from the microwave, but now that I’ve taken

to the practice of mindfulness
I leave my hand on its door handle

and pay attention, like my niece when she plays
Microwave, zapping soda cans

in her plastic appliance labeled Just Like Home.
The waves pass through me—

my soft tissue lighting up like phantom vibrations
in a dead landline. Until the sun goes down I orbit

between my workspace, bathroom, kitchen, bed,
taking conference calls about artificial intelligence.

First order of business is to define what intelligence is,
then how to avoid a dystopian eventuality.

We hold our phones away from our ears,
speakers on high, because we all read

the same headline about radiation.
When somebody’s dog barks near the phone

somebody else’s dog barks back.
This is the best part of my day.

Ryann Stevenson