Month: August 2014

No, Angel

Books and Literature, Culture, Justice, Media, Plus ça change motherfuckers, Poetry, Religion

Not six-wingèd, nor a fiery wheel,
not four-bodied, though a living being,
human but for other human’s seeing
only what they a priori feel
to be true. Did he say fuck? Did he steal?
Was he sometimes prone to disagreeing?
Black? A teen? All but guaranteeing
some journalistic posthumous appeal
to see the nuance, meaning the bad sides.
No life is a story, and no story has
two sides: it is a universe, expanding,
not some taxonomic Alcatraz.
Here is the truth your subtlety elides:
there is no peace surpassing understanding.

If Obedience Is a Condition of Existence, Then We Must Resist by Disappearing

Culture, Economy, Justice, Plus ça change motherfuckers, Poetry, Things that Actually Happen, War and Politics

Even though it might sound harsh and impolitic, here is the bottom line: if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you. Don’t argue with me, don’t call me names, don’t tell me that I can’t stop you, don’t say I’m a racist pig, don’t threaten that you’ll sue me and take away my badge. Don’t scream at me that you pay my salary, and don’t even think of aggressively walking towards me.

A cop writes that he has the right to shoot
a man for walking too aggressively,
shoot if he delays or if he flees,
shoot if he fails to kowtow or salute,
shoot if he gets too smart or thinks he’s cute.
The predicate of law is immunity
for lawmen; ours is a cop timocracy,
the badge the only property, the boot
the only vote. The price of life is death,
therefore, if you don’t wish to buy it, you
must make an effort never to be born.
Not far away from here, borne on the breath
of a heat-bleeding highway, a hawk or two
rise in spirals over the mice-filled corn.

A Love Poem Awkwardly Inspired By a Stupid Video Feature at Slate.Com

Art, Books and Literature, Culture, Media, Poetry, Things that Actually Happen

Do the rights and freedoms we currently enjoy mean that now is the best time in history to be gay?

When was the best time ever to be gay?
It was when we met. Before that we
were accidents of sex taxonomy;
now we’re texts and winks throughout the day.
Were we to travel back through history,
find ourselves in Death in Venice’s day,
or lounging like ancient Greeks carved in clay
as charms against queer specificity,
I’d still measure the good from when I first
swiveled a barstool so our knees would touch
and laughed too loud and hard and talked too much
and covered my nerves with beer and was the worst.
You still came home with me, and stayed, and here
we are regardless of the marked and measured year.