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Jeff Pollet

@jeffpollet.bsky.social

149 followers 175 following 102 posts

Oakland. www.jeffpollet.com

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Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

Brought to a meeting by a woman I was dating
Feels a little cult-y I told her as it started
First off, this is not a cult - the cultists said, started the meeting
making fun of themselves a little bit
not a bad sign, in some ways, I thought

Then
Self help this, self help that
Level up this, level up that
Same old, same old
Pay this, get that
No different than paying to absolve your sins
at least in my mind
Then, typical, they say they're going to take the potential new members
to another room
Divide and conquer, another classic strategy

I tell my partner that I'm going to take off
just not my thing, and she nods in understanding
At the door the cultists ask me why I'm leaving
just not my thing, I tell them and they nod in understanding yet
still standing in my way

What's causing this resistance to change in you?
Asked in a tone of an innocent question
But the content is right up there with
Have you stopped beating your wife?

If I happened into this situation today
I would just say no reason and walk around them
But back then
Back then
I don't know, I thought they had a right to a response?
Or maybe I enjoyed bullying them back

Paying for leveling up seems wrong to me - I said
Just one thing that was bothering me

Valuable things, things that are valuable, cost money
They told me
They told me, knowing that somebody
(not these people in the trenches)
(but still, somebody)
Was making money while all of the
Volunteers
The people doing the work here today
Weren't being paid
Except in self help.

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

I know these words
Are angsty like a growing teen brain thought them
My poetic adolescence

I know

Heavy handed
Overwrought
Cliche, even
(that would be aiming high)

Too many parenthesis
Far too many
Line
Breaks
For
No
Reason
(just because I feel like it)

Don't care.

They're just for me
Expressions thrown into the air
For me to look at with wonder, with love
Or
Juggling phrases
Because it's fun to juggle
Or
Emotional undercurrents examined from the corner of my eye
Or
Linguistic stress vomit

Just for me
Shared with three to five people
(ish)
Who might want to know me better
Who might find echoes of themselves there.

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

#PoetryCorner #poetry

This is where I think I'm Ethan Hawke in Before Sunrise
But I'm not even Ethan Hawke in
Before Sunset, or Midnight
I'm not even Elliot Gould in
The Long Goodbye

But I feel confident
As a few moments tick by
Where chemistry feels like something again
Something in my body
Not just something invented by idle minds

And that confidence carries over
A day
Two
Until it fades quickly
Like her tired smile fades into apathy
And I feel myself again
The good, bad, ugly and pretty
All of it undermining
Whatever made up reality
I was living in two days ago.

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

Part of me knew back then where the words would take us
Even as the carcinogenic dust hadn't yet settled
(Into the lungs of the first responders)
(Even that phrase has power it never had before)
(I long for a time when I didn't know what "first responders" could mean)
Even before we waged war because of
Whatever reasons we needed to make war
(And really, we don't need any reason at all)
(War comes along with modern humans)
(I don't want to believe that)
(But I do believe that)
Even before racism was turned up to eleven
Phrases already began to appear in our psyche
Spontaneous generation making a return in the mental world of all of us

I wanted to tear them out by the root, before they could even see the sun.

But they grew.
And now it's difficult to explain how
There didn't used to be a Department of Homeland Security
Sometimes it's difficult to even remember myself that there wasn't

"Homeland"? I remember the word as a question echoing inside my skull
Isn't there anybody who remembers WWII?
Didn't anybody read 1984?
Anne Frank?
All the warnings
(Themselves given to us in words, of course)
They didn't really take, did they?
"Homeland" will never ring true to me
It's always a warning of what's to come.

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

Hitler continued to declare, however, that ‘the fight against the nation’s internal enemies’, meaning in particular the Jews, ‘will never fail because of formal bureaucracy and its inadequacy’, because the Party itself would take it up. The state, he said, with its formal system of laws and courts, was no more than ‘an organizational form of racial life, driven on and ruled by the direct expression of the people’s will to life – the Party of the National Socialist movement’. Hitler believed that formal legislation and the cumbersome and rule-bound operations of the law were hindrances to the implementation of the people’s will, which he increasingly identified with his own.
--“Hitler's People” by Richard J Evans

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Ah, Work ------------------------------------------- My boss comes in at noon Leaves again at 2 to "run errands" Making it back right before I leave at 5 Just in time to complain: "Nobody wants to work anymore" #poetrycorner

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

These promos are giving this energy, and it's bleh.

Picture from Avenger's Endgame with the dumb scene of somehow all of the primary female heroes in one shot.

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Grat

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

Izzy looking snarky.

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Men

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

Thanks, some longtime friends...

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Thank you Jen

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Chaos

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Flowers

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 23/05/2024

Out of the gate, the "reading mode" on Chrome isn't doing much...

Screenshot that shows that the "Simplify your reading experience" page from Chrome doesn't work well in reading mode.

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 08/05/2024

that tracks

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 03/05/2024

Can't help but see this in my mind's eye

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 06/11/2023

Heh.

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 01/11/2023

Jeff Pollet @jeffpollet.bsky.social · 11/09/2023

I hate that doing gratitude lists helps me, but it does.

Gratitude list: Health insurance, new bike seat, healthy friends, queer parades, this too shall pass; a small drawing of a dog wearing a trans flag bandana.