The gardener is planting

blue and white 

flowers

some angel moved in with me

to flee the cold

temperatures on earth are

rising

but we wear upon us some

immovable frost

everyone carries his dying as

a growing shadow

- Etel Adnan

They say 'kill the cop in your head' 

reanimate the body like a zombie 

Pull the vessel into something more meaningful and less lonely 

No one can know enough to discern the first crack

sleep walk backward 

don't laugh 

This gun is barbed

spiked 

everyone is implicated 

history in syndication

They say 'scratch a liberal bleed a fascist' 

but dig into the heart and scrap the bone of any human deep enough and you'll find a nazi vulnerable and hungry 

Abort the volume and rotate the dial 

Turn around

come back

 

2016: Now is the time. Now we will resist. Now we will organize. Now we will gather in solidarity. Now we will put our differences aside. Now we will overwhelm. Now is the time to demand. Now is the time for courage. Now is the time for bravery. Who are you?

2017: Now we will resist. Now we will organize. Now we will gather in solidarity. Now we will put our differences aside. Now we will overwhelm. Now is the time to demand. Now is the time for courage. Now is the time for bravery. Who are you?

2018: Now we will organize. Now we will gather in solidarity. Now we will put our differences aside. Now we will overwhelm. Now is the time to demand. Now is the time for courage. Now is the time for bravery. Who are you?

2019: Now we will gather in solidarity. Now we will put our differences aside. Now we will overwhelm. Now is the time to demand. Now is the time for courage. Now is the time for bravery. Who are you?

2020: Now we will put our differences aside. Now we will overwhelm. Now is the time to demand. Now is the time for courage. Now is the time for bravery. Who are you?

2021: Now we will overwhelm. Now is the time to demand. Now is the time for courage. Now is the time for bravery, who are you?

2022: Now is the time to demand. Now is the time for courage. Now is the time for bravery. Who are you?

2023: Now is the time for courage. Now is the time for bravery. Who are you?

2024: Now is the time. Who are you?

2025: Who are you?

Somehow we survive

We are in a new age, for now. We are all going to get what's coming. Masses rescinding in advance. I feel a violent whiplash from Jan. 6th 4 yrs ago to now. This is all on Biden, Weekend at Biden's team and the Democrats but I'd like to take a moment to curse out the Dem primary voters of 2020 who saw Biden on display for over a year and said 'this is the man who can save us, we want to go back to sleep' and look what has been wrought. If he had never been VP Biden would have never even broke 5% in the primaries.  

What keeps me up is not what Trump and the GOP have planned, because that has been on my mind the past few years since 2021 (yes seriously), but the lack of mainstream resistance and on the ground in comparison to years prior. It's like an abandoned mine town. Now one could claim the mainstream resistance wasn't built on a solid foundation other than American institutions and exceptionalism is great "America is already great!" which isn't wrong but I'd prefer it to this. A new grotesqueness is the pop culture acceptance of him. To Carrie Underwood and Snoop Dogg and Jeff Bezos and Oscar DeLa Renta and Dior, etc rolling their tongues out and wagging. And sure we shouldn't be looking to figures like this for guidance and I don't but this acceptance that was unthinkable eight years ago is chilling. Like the 1930s, as they say history doesn't repeat but it often rhymes. I guess the Hays Code is coming back with Gibson, Stallone, and Voight leading the charge. Back to reactionary white hetro American masculine classics of The Golden Age of Hollywood. The GOP ghouls in Indiana are putting up a bill to make divorce harder and states are trying to get abortion as a death penalty punishment. These other groups and orgs who weren't mainstream resistance libs where are they? They have been hollowed out the past few years and many people have seem to have exited.

Trump is the luckiest motherfucker that ever lived and Biden is the biggest loser on earth. 

What an unspeakable tragedy we are being strapped in and lowered into, a new reverse Operation Warp Speed.

Though I do want to pause outside of myself and I am thankful even if it's temporary for the relief of the ceasefire for the Palestinians. 

Free them all.

I think of this poem "Somehow We Survive" by Dennis Brutus a survivor of South African apartheid often since I came across it around 7 years ago. We will need these words to move through what comes.

Somehow we survive
More terrible than any beast
that can be tamed or bribed
the iron monster of the world ingests me in its grinding maw:

agile as ballet-dancer
fragile as butterfly
I eggdance with nimble wariness
-stave off my fated splintering

Somehow we survive
and tenderness, frustrated, does not wither
investigating searchlights rake
our naked unprotected contours;
over our heads the monolithic decalogue

of fascist prohibition glowers
and teeters for the catastrophic fall;
boots club the peeling door.
But somehow we survive severance,
deprivation, loss.

Patrols uncoil along the asphalt dark
hissing their menace to our lives,
most cruel, all our land is scarred with terror,
rendered unlovely and lovable;
sundered are we and all our passionate surrender
but somehow tenderness survives.

IF I MUST DIE

 

If I must die, 

you must live 

to tell my story 

to sell my things 

to buy a piece of cloth 

and some strings, 

(make it white with a long tail) 

so that a child, somewhere in Gaza 

while looking heaven in the eye 

awaiting his dad who left in a blaze— 

and bid no one farewell 

not even to his flesh 

not even to himself— 

sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above 

and thinks for a moment an angel is there 

bringing back love 

If I must die 

let it bring hope 

let it be a tale

- Refaat Alareer

Our children are buried under the rubble

Release the hostages!

You are bombing our hospitals

Release the hostages!

You are blowing up our schools

Release the hostages!

There is not enough water or food

or even fuel

Release the hostages!

There is no milk for the newborns

Release the hostages!

or sanitary napkins for women

Release the hostages!

You also have thousands of hostages

in your prisons for years.

Release the hostages!

You are killing us

Release the hostages!

You are killing your hostages

Release the hostages!

Can you hear us?

Release the hostages!

- Mosab Abu Toha