don't get captured.

sometimes one must plunge outside of history so as not to take another’s life.
like a very particular hair tie or mongol DNA we snap and weave 
between and towards
foreign future
and
uncomfortable past.
if only you had ever begun to consider time!
I’m not too lazy to have noticed how
low your eyes have sunk like
disabled vets stare at mushrooms clouds or like
retired doctors stare at carpets.
your legs are not broken / your knees still spry.
what fuel to make fire to make where there’s smoke?
recordare:
maybe now it’s useful, that pain we talked of.


untitled #145
Thine eyes failed to see that Social Glory come sauntering down the hall,
trade rows for walls when everyone blinks through a lens;
they stamp their memory onto square coins of paper,
loose them onto the spider’s web
stitched from the lace in that lily white bridal dress.
Thine eyes fail to believe what never danced before them;
a pound of quivering flesh like a paperweight on your paper proofs.
caught like a fruit fly born onto the spider’s web.
caught like a woman born into a midwife’s employ.
the lace peaks out from the back of the closet,
a paler shade of white, wrapped in similar stucco flight.
Your arms outstretch in reception.
I’m caught like a bouquet, in-air,
and everyone, in their drinks and their mutterings,
eyes never leaving the arachnian path.


gold lot.
Your hip! 
descends and clears, allowing the music
to swell, to strive upwards, to climb
your ribcage.
I’ll swallow the key, and nothing more.
Your shoulder!
vacant of an Iblis, a perch ready for 
my own.
A collar bone that brings about a reaffirming shame,
a chagrin over not remembering how
to tie a tie.
(In name only, but still)
I’ll swallow the key, and not a thing more.
Your savor!
wears on my instruments and lounges
amongst my sheets,
choked ‘twixt my knees and bound
to me when I exit for a place with no space
or time, with mere frames in lieu 
of distance,
with you, our callow scoff
of distance.
I’ll swallow the key, and hopefully nothing more.



“Yet the wholly enlightened earth is radiant with triumphant calamity.”
I am the increasingly socially acceptable test 
tube baby, child of Apollo and Dionysus;
new in the area, seems like a great place to raise
a family, dig up some roots and we shall
sew your vineyard with two types of seed.
A distant church bell is caught in the breeze.
I lay my undecided head under a vinyl roof,
we have no parapet for we don’t
like to talk about that cost out loud.
My god, this air conditioner makes not a sound.
Sunday mornings and we’ve made three
tassels on our cloaks; the snow, white,
disturbed only by a spread of where angels had been,
having absconded for safer spaces.

Outside of order is where they say we lose our graces.

Sunday, December 25, 2016 Comments

prologue

“…and you know I can’t even walk to the damned liquor store without seein’ them all, hootin’ and hollerin’ out front.”

11:38 at night and the city’s crumbling infrastructure meant the 11:35 bus was probably still chugging along, several blocks west of where Joshua sat, one ear faintly catching the words of the fellow next to him and the other one searching meagerly for the compressed hiss that usually signaled the approach of public transport.  It would be the last bus of the night, resuming its creep and crawl again at 6:10 a.m. 

“I tell ya, man; that whole side of town was beautiful until the fuckin’ niggers started to show up.”  Joshua winced at the sharpness of the man’s only half-listened to words.  He glanced at his hands, hands which looked to have held nothing but charcoal all day, and shrugged his shoulders, knowing that making eye contact would in some way validate the man’s hate.  “I get my disability checks usually ‘round the sixth of each month… unless it’s on a Sunday… but I usually go and treat myself to a nice bottle.  Helps me sleep some nights.  But I always gotta wait in line behind some old batshit ‘coon, countin’ out his change he made begging, just to buy a fuckin’ pint of vodka.  Can you believe that?  These people would rather drink life away than go get a fuckin’ job.”  

“Yeah… jobs are important,” Joshua replied, his eyes searching the road for any sign of the bus.  An older black woman shuffled down the sidewalk opposite of them, her pace jagged but determined.  Hoping desperately her hearing was as weak as her gait, he accepted the inevitability of the prejudiced man’s soliloquy and instead attempted to change the subject, asking innocently and coyly “do you think the bus is running late?”

“Seems ‘bout like it.  Probably a fuckin’ black woman drivin’ it too.  That’s what it was when I came down here this afternoon.”  The icy pins and needles that danced across Joshua’s arms and spine reminded him that he had a habit of assuming unconscious responsibility for the ills, spoken or otherwise, of those physically nearest him; the woman made no motion that she had heard or was offended and only continued her solitary trudging eastward.  

“I don’t know about that,” and as soon as the words left Joshua’s mouth he heard the whistling brakes of the approaching transport.  Thank God, he exclaimed internally, his gratitude extending more towards the belated fulfillment of civil services than his long-dwindling belief in anything supernatural.  Sputtering into the chipping, painted lines of the bus stop, the vehicle let out an exhausted hiss as it was shifted into park.  The doors swung open seconds later.  Shouldering his backpack, Joshua stepped towards the dimly-lit entrance and begin digging in his jacket pocket for the pre-counted bus fare.

“I’m still waitin’ on the 19 bus.  Y’all have a good night though,” the man called out, as if in reply to a cordial salutations that Joshua never even thought to mutter.  

“Yeah.  God bless,” he countered, his words probably not making it past the rumble of the engine.  

The bus driver, an older gentleman with a passing resemblance to a painting Joshua’s childhood Sunday school had of King David, tiredly glanced at the money as it slid into the payment slot.  Joshua wondered if he had thought the blessing was for him, and frankly he wouldn’t have minded if he did; his eyes seemed to beg for forgiveness.  Or sleep.  The latter is more tangible.

Walking to the middle of the bus and selecting a seat, he noticed the sparse population of the bus route.  So few heads this late on the city’s so-called busiest route made a widening of the services seem unlikely.  The obvious lower class nature and increasingly darker pigments further swung Joshua’s mind towards cynicism.

In the rear of the vehicle, a Panamanian woman, deep into the final years of her twenties, her legs pulled up close to her body and her temple pressed to the chilly glass, sobbed quietly.

Monday, May 9, 2016 Comments

the curtain goes down on everyone

there is an actual thing you do;
between pay-out and pigment,
something untouched
and oily with our touch.
You said it was oily with my touch.
I’ve never given myself a chance to apologize.
And we’re both just standing there,
broken glass at our feet
and I’m so fixated on forgetting Saturdays
and you’re laughing
prodding
reminding me.
The sun glares into the frame
and the scene ends as the music fades into.
God, I try not to let my speech err.
God, I try not;

if only it had Been.

Saturday, January 16, 2016 Comments

Say goodbye to the general figment of the USS Imagination

Despite the noble soil from which its roots burst forth, feminism is malleable and therefore able to be pulled from it’s revolutionary contexts and played by a reactionary hand.  Much like the identity politics’ racialist elements, feminisms conceptual form is deeply entwined with idealistic categorizations that lack material grounding, unlike a more (I’m hesitant to say) orthodox Marxist class analysis.  A political theory based on non-economic factors like race or sex/uality allows for broad coalitions to be formed irrespective of class situation, creating a, say, “feminism” that is able to not only coexist and operate fluently within capitalism, but in fact, actively battles against dialectics by imposing a false notion of the oppressor/oppressed binary.  A solidarity of identity with zero class analysis renders an individual like Beyoncé as “exploited” while labeling a white male living in poverty (be it in Ukraine or the Appalachians) as an exploiter.

This is not to deny the obvious truth that women and people of color face a disproportionate amount of oppression in the world of capitalist relations.  However, capitalism proves such a formidable foe because of it’s ability to absorb and utilize a majority of the weaponry used against it (an example of this would be the surging popularity of “green”products: instead of combating the forces leading to ecological destruction, one can instead support that same system but receive the social/mental feeling of “helping”).  A lower-class-based solidarity is a much more difficult strategy for a system of class superiority to tackle. 

(An aside must be mentioned here: my usage of “lower class” comes with much hesitation and is used, in this particular case, mostly out of lack of linguistic creativity on my part.  The larger debate to be had is what exactly defines “lower class” and this, I feel, is an issue in which the subjective interpretation is heavily influenced by the individuals own “flavor” or “moment” of dialectics; those concerned with the “nationalist question” could posit the, in this spatial case, American working class, invisible classes, etc. as the lower class.  A more Maoist-based perspective, such as MIM’s, would place the populations of the Third World in this category, relegating the former response to the role of the oppressive “labor aristocracy."  To some this may seem an irreconcilable chasm to cross; to the optimist, it is but a mere footstep when compared to the continent-wide split between reaction and revolution.)

A quick glance at the dominant narrative of the mainstream feminist movement (and greater PC culture in general) shows a dreadfully uneconomic mask.  Instead of rhetoric aimed at a socio-economic system in which oppression along identity lines comes naturally, the mark is lowered and pseudo-insurrectionary shots are fired at the identity lines themselves.  “Capitalism” is no longer the enemy; the much harder to pinpoint and define “patriarchy” instead becomes the locus of oppression.  “PC culture,” at it’s heart, is reactionary in this sense that it seeks to erase class and eradicate the division between the one who is exploited and those who do the exploiting for profit; a polemic against the mass wealth and reactionary politics of, say, Caitlyn Jenner or Jay-Z will be tossed out as symptomatic of transphobia or racism, as the aforementioned individuals identity is viewed as their essential signifier, rather than their placement, and participation, on/in the class hierarchy.  This is why one will see mainstream feminists and open expressions of such ideals: it has been neutered of all threatening qualities.  H&M will produce a shirt parading the definition of feminism, MSNBC will feature culture pieces on “the feminist hashtag as a powerful weapon and laughable Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina will offer her version of feminism, minus the “progressive” elements she identifies as holding the movement back.  As many examples can be made manifest for ethnic or racial divisions. The same cannot be said for class. H&M will not produce a shirt celebrating the definition of proletarian struggle against the wealthy.  MSNBC will not author a segment about the working class struggle to collectivize the work place.  No candidate (let alone person) pushing for the socialist nationalization of major industries will be given a sober and fair chance to argue their views on national television (even a social democrat like Bernie Sanders is shunned from the mainstream spotlight and his ideas aren’t remotely radical when placed in comparison to the past few decades of most conventional European national dialectics).  These things will not be produced or paid mind to because they are not able to pacified or exorcised of their threat towards global capital relations.  Promotion of class-based solidarity is, by it’s very nature, anti-capitalist and therefore will be rhetorically ignored and then attacked (and violently suppressed when that proves not enough).

It must be noted once again, as I’m sure the echo chamber has forgotten by now, that this diatribe is not to disregard the increased struggle in front of working class women, POC’s and sexual minorities (to keep the list short and basic).  It is only to push the envelope further and combat the stagnation of theory, to destroy the sedentary nature to which American radicalism has reduced itself. 
We have nothing to lose but our chains. 

Thursday, January 7, 2016 Comments

the damned don't cry.

"Sometimes you, the ever-ardent Atheist, get flustered, when someone dies or a family member gets accused of heinous crime, about the relatives and friends around you inserting God into the dialogue...but we must remember that everything is philosophy; science, religion, politics, astrophysics, mass media, eugenics... a billion different discourses pushing and pulling on the material world. The pursuit into broader language for almost any and each requiring the privilege of higher education and/or leisure. Religion is the open lingua-philosophy of the lower classes; its expression no different than our own post-postmodern wrestlings with the ontological dilemmas in our lives. These are simple languages for simple minds, at their base. and while we may feel superiority to them, with our post-existentialism and our nuclear warheads, we must remember it is the geniuses, in often utilitarian pursuits, who create the methods for the simple to enact their more obscene acts upon each other."

Tuesday, January 5, 2016 Comments

Tughyan


We have come face to face with Religion-without-God; it is like a land fill of kerygma and arbitrary fatwas.  We seek instead to realize the God-beyond-Religion of a world theology.  Far from being a rejection of ritual and dogma, it is a continued and/or intensified conversation with God using both the interpersonal language of specific worship and praise of the Strains of Faith, as well as the communal language of Thou (a language that incorporates and permeates both the Abrahamic and the Dharmic, the pagan and the nontheist).  The glint of Divinity, breathing between the words of man’s subjective experience as manifested in the Texts, is the expressible and (at least somewhat) intelligible pathos of God manifesting itself.  The outcome of any task completed with a tool is undeniably shaped in some way by the condition of the tool; a comb with missing eyes is less adequate in solving the issue of tangled hair.  Likewise, the expression of Ineffable pathos is shaped and made subjective by the human being who utters such.

Monday, January 4, 2016 Comments

al-Fatiha

(choose:)

"To say that we still belong here is a sin," 
shouted from the crook of your arm,
the glance to the side,
behind stupid fucking addict eyes.
You just need time to digest
and I haven't been eating nearly enough.
Empty shelves, empty thoughts.
A recession of the heart and I'll rip at the factory doors with these crooked crowbar arms.
You just need time to digress
and I'm just wondering why you won't take off that watch,
wondering why it's called a watch
when there's nothing there to see?
A recession of the heart and you just need time to impress.
Behind my eyes and under my words.
Reverb, static and the creaking of often shut doors;
It's either this or the Flood.

Comments

MIMESIS

O, we who have been placed at the end of time:
may the Divinely fallible love of market disruptors
come looting and burning like a thief in the night.
the huddled masses find no flag more suitable than the black,
and whether She leans on rifle or plough,
Her eyes remain transfixed on the Commune.
would you know the Commune of Thou,
were it to stand before you like a thief in the light?
It is the abasement of Mammon and the devaluing of Time,
it is the cadence of a pair of feet in lieu of a calvary.
“O, we who have been placed at the beginning of Something Different,
as it was, never shall it become.”

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