i wake up pre-dawn
and light a candle
the wind, pristine and strong,
whistling cold through an opened window
my preferred lullaby for a few hours more
i wake again,
this time, my home revolving into the
ancient light
and to familiar jurassic sounds
vocalizations of sandhill cranes
my bed is warmed by vintage wool and living fur
/ like my ancestors, sort of /
february 29, 2024
Gaza City, Gaza, Palestine
for all the demons, monsters and liars,
today and always, everywhere:
good afternoon:
i feel like i should have started my heirloom tomato and chiltepin seeds on New Year’s Eve, but i haven’t even ordered or sorted seeds yet;
that I should’ve picked up a bottle of mineral facial sunscreen and given myself a pedicure yesterday;
that the swimsuits overwhelming retail spaces are not for spring breakers and resort goers but for anyone headed to North Avenue Beach in Chicago or Silver Beach in Michigan today;
and that i wish i didn’t know that the Thwaites Glacier is hanging on by fewer and weaker pinning points;
do you respect or even revere military service? i know many of you certainly do/
Continue reading “an open letter on a 65°f primary election day in Michigan | day 145 of Israel’s acute genocide of the Palestinian People”
“𝙄 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙣𝙤 𝙡𝙤𝙣𝙜𝙚𝙧 𝙗𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙥𝙡𝙞𝙘𝙞𝙩 𝙞𝙣 𝙜𝙚𝙣𝙤𝙘𝙞𝙙𝙚, 𝙄 𝙖𝙢 𝙖𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙩𝙤 𝙚𝙣𝙜𝙖𝙜𝙚 𝙞𝙣 𝙖𝙣 𝙚𝙭𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙢𝙚 𝙖𝙘𝙩 𝙤𝙛 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙩𝙚𝙨𝙩.”
“𝙁𝙧𝙚𝙚 𝙋𝙖𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙚!”
“25 years old Aaron Bushnell has succumbed to his injuries after self-immolation outside the gates of Israeli embassy in the settler colonial U.S. capital, Washington D.C. Bushnell live-streamed a Twitch video stating, “I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest but, compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.” He then poured unidentifiable liquid upon himself and set himself on fire as he repeatedly screamed, “Free Palestine”!
In typical fashion, Western media and pro-genocide human filth have taken it upon themselves to condemn, ridicule, joke, ignore, and manipulate the action and character of Bushnell. Remarking with vile and inhumane disregard for his actions instead of examining and reflecting on what drove Bushnell to this extreme form of protest. Let us not lose sight of our humanity as politicians and warmongering cowards steer humanity closer and closer toward authoritarian control and collective madness.
Let this moment remind us of why we must speak up and continue fighting for Palestinian Liberation and decolonization of all colonized peoples. Let it remind us to unite toward continued actions of love and solidarity and survival. Let it remind us that we desperately need one another for the fights ahead and that we must fight with all our might to protect one another as we strive to dismantle unjust and oppressive systems in our bodies, in our families, in our friendships, in our communities, and in this gigantic world.
May Aaron’s friends and family have the space and courage to mourn and the confidence of outside support to rise above the scorn and ridicule of inhumane journalists, media outlets, and brainwashed citizens. May Aaron rest amongst his ancestors and bless this world with clarity, compassion, hope, and rebirth.” — RISE INDIGENOUS
content warning: video below
Continue reading “Aaron Bushnell, Rest in Peace! “Free Palestine!””he’s visited me three times, now
the first time in over a dozen years
i am glad to see him
her visits make more sense
it’s only been
october to november,
november to december
december to …
four and a half months
well,
this doesn’t bode
well
i leave a coin on my dresser
in front of a foto of him
i challenge him to flip the coin
i situate the silver bell on my nightstand
nearer to a photo of her
i challenge her to ring the bell
i think about pulling a card
not yet. not yet.
the black flies
and ladybugs of these
warming winters
droves sounds dramatic
but dozens, hundreds of each hatching
in the southern windows
boxelder bugs too
not amityville horror-level
i know now that was bullshit,
no evil entity need exist (save for my kind)
all old country houses are nurseries for
insecta
gutted the bathroom and found
1000 black walnuts beneath the tub
and later, inside the kitchen doorway lintel,
a red squirrel’s deep nest, convenient, efficient
all old country houses are potential residence for rodentia
absent humans (my kind)
abandoned for a year or two,
the wild begins to reclaim
and who doesn’t want in, after all?
i did, i wanted in
found myself let in, found my own way in — or
what does it really matter.
i was in.
she negotiated her mortality
prematurely
suddenly, but not unexpectedly
the many days over 30 years
she imagined or wished herself gone
she wears like a scarlet letter,
better a moss green letter, a french blue one
A for Agony
A for Asshole
A for “A”, school girl, good girl
A for Antigone
A for Anam
the tears, wasted and years, squandered
tethering her to expectations of men and mothers
to shame and insignificance
to dumb successes and false failures
“To be neutral, to be passive in a situation is to collaborate with whatever is going on.
You can’t be neutral on a moving train,’ I would tell them. . . . Events are already moving in certain deadly directions, and to be neutral means to accept that.
Howard Zinn
Continue reading “From the River to the Sea | neutrality empowers and normalizes genocide”
If you ever wondered what you’d have done during
[Transatlantic human trafficking and chattel slavery,
Manifest Destiny,
The Indian Removal Act,
the Trail of Tears,
the Wounded Knee Massacre,
The Homestead Act,
Jim Crow and lynch mobs,
the Holocaust,
Apartheid,
or the Civil Rights Movement]
… well,
you’re doing it
right now.
i want to share things like:
this morning, i accidentally swiped my cosmetic brush across the 4 toned mineral highlight powder instead of translucent powder — and i now look like a 70s disco queen (especially with bed hair) or Ziggy Stardust (it’s too much to rewash my face and i’m just gonna look like this all day)
and, that i had another Big Dream (Jungian) early this morning before Sun’s rise — it was powerful and unnerving; are you dreaming too? have you had any Big Dreams?
and, that after buying myself 5 (actually 7) houseplant babies for the Ides of February, bringing the total upwards of 50 plants, my house is still not even close to being filled — so how can i be called a “plant lady”?
and that a crow died here and i performed some rites over and left gifts upon, their dear remains;
Continue reading “i want to tell you, talk with you, about things, but i can’t, we can’t | we can only cry: CEASEFIRE, FREE PALESTINE! Rafah!”i have a heart for crows.
a Crow died and also lived here
likely dying during or before the brief, but deep snowdrifts of january 2024
and definitely not by predation; Crows are simply too smart for the local feral cat bird-killers (the only worthwhile information that author Jonathan Franzen ever imparted to me) — and work in groups to warn and defend against hawks and owls;
Continue reading “crow-hearted”“and the [future] memory of snow”
the ticks never slept
the lilacs just awoke
shh! go back to bed
this clock is all fucked up
the roses’ leaves are greening
the kale and fennel, well, they never died
i hear the blackbirds singing
yet fruit’s nowhere in sight
he thought he saw some brown bats
and i’ve sighted bunnies in the field
i’ve worried about a pre-emergence
and now, these worries become real
february rains replaced snowpack
this, another, cause for dread.
and now the maplesap’s flowing,
it seems this winter’s all but dead
last evening, i finally finished watching the film “Oppenheimer” — a biographical film centered primarily on two forces of physics:
J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb
in the film, the cohort of physicists involved in the development of the atomic bomb postulated that the force and heat of the nuclear explosion could trigger a runaway atomic chain reaction by igniting atmospheric nitrogen —- thus, engulfing and destroying the entire planet — their confident mathematical conclusion: “near zero” — but not absolutely zero;
that infinitesimal quantum potential was apparently played to over-dramatic effect for the film — curious about the validity of this apocalyptic concern, i learned that this was never more than a scenario that required elimination in early mathematical and scientific due diligence;
still, the possibility instantly struck me as a parallel for the runaway greenhouse effect — where the greenhouse gas concentrations in Earth’s atmosphere trigger feedback loops that indeed ignite and fuel further feedback loops — causing abrupt climate change, planetary inhabitability and then mass extinction — where no adaptation, mitigation or survival is possible and plants, animals and humans die en masse —
conditions of which, we are on the cusp right now — an anthropogenic-caused-and-accelerated global temperature event horizon that is postulated as a very real probability by climate scientists and evolutionary/conservation biologists across the globe even as it’s played out as something that could occur over the next centuries or millennia rather than in this or the next decade or two —
yet, that more-than-zero-possibility scenario was detailed in a January 2024 article in Popular Mechanics based on a published model in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics
i write today to pay my belated respects and sympathies and to process my retroactive and present grief and rage:
Continue reading “Destroyers of World”
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 