my mother turned 75 years-old yesterday
and that’s all i know,
about her
anymore
The rapidity with which this Trump administration moves — for those who had accepted incremental change, bureaucratic molasses and the long arc of justice as just par-for-the-course of the ‘democratic’ process and social progression in the US — those falsehoods and everything else that has been revealed in these last two months — is both mockery and insult added to our collective American (and global) actual injuries.
Capitalism and Neoliberalism paved the road for — and then engineered and constructed the super highway to, oligarchal fascism.
Continue reading “a breakneck, yet-always foregone conclusion”Billionaire JB Pritzker, the current Governor of the State of Illinois in an annual constitutionally mandated “State Of The State” address of February 19, 2025, questioned the near and long-term State of the Union — of the United States of America,
the relevant paragraphs are excerpted below with a link to the full transcript:
Continue reading “The time is NOW for applied anti-fascist actions of resistance and desistance and acts of courage —firstly, by elected and sworn state and local leadership”Winter Sky Sunrises and endless Horizon, Mountains, Forests, Prairies and Waters were traded for cities, skyscrapers and highways, built and named by corporations, governments and militias to populate with executives, politicians, engineers, administrators, marketers, managers, soldiers and subordinates — the wealth of the corporate-nation city-state dependent on the slow, then fast, destruction of all the Land and Waters and Beings on Earth
the Earth, on which i stood to take this photo this very Morning — and, the Atmosphere, which made the Trees, the Snow, the Clouds, and the Sky colors possible at all, this very Morning.
steel towers, stone temples, asphalt streams, and concrete rivers built to ensure that our feet rarely touch the Earth, that our eyes rarely witness Living and Being;
that we look up or that we look down, but, that we barely look around, that we rarely look within and that we that we never look beyond — so that we forget to remember.
the cities were designed and engineered for doing — which is the opposite of Being;
doing, which is a euphemism for undoing;
undoing, which is actually destruction — and which is ultimately,
a forgetting.
Forgetting to remember where we came from.
Forgetting to remember what we are made of.
Forgetting to remember what we were made for.
Our Elders say that ceremony is the way we can remember to remember. In the dance of the giveaway, remember that the Earth is a gift that we must pass on, just as it came to us. When we forget, the dances we’ll need will be for mourning. For the passing of Polar Bears, the Silence of Cranes, for the Death of Rivers and the Memory of Snow.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer
from her Northland College 2015 commencement address
a sweet spot, a warm, quiet evening,
of a too-soft winter here,
on & of the good Earth,
that tempts the comfortable one
to flirt with forgetting
the hard totality
of this hot and cold, man-made,
loud and brutal World.
i traveled a river of concrete in a machine,
you traveled an ocean of air in a machine,
babies crying, inconsolably, you said
i said, eustachean tubes aren’t meant for 30,000 feet.
i am not meant for this,
neither are you,
neither are they.
not the opposite of joy
on Christmas eve
but the false pursuit of it
whatever is actually contrary to it
even if we don’t know it when we see it.
even if we refuse to know it when we see it.
if i allow myself to cry, he will see it on my face.
Continue reading “on Christmas eve”
Replicating anti anti-fascist and anti anti-zionist propaganda and gaslighting tactics, the political marketing class and sworn officials of the U.S. and New York State Governments cosplay as integrity police and justice arbiters, and attempt to manipulate both the rule of their false law and their false order to condemn, litigate and abolish the law of the streets and resistance movements for liberation and justice.
They will fail.
Continue reading “the war on anti-terror”“What do you do? You wack the C.E.O. at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention. It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents,”
passage written in a notebook attributed to alleged Anti-Terrorist, Luigi Mangione
a version of this essay was first published December 8, 2015
“Christmas is coming,
the goose is getting fat,
please put a penny in the old man's hat,
if you haven't got a penny,
then, a half-penny will do,
if you haven't got a half-penny,
then God bless you.”
I went to the nearest Dollar Store to buy old-fashioned, stringy, silver tinsel for our christmas tree.
All that glitters is not silver or gold, is never ever golden, whether you buy your pretty ornaments or wrapping paper for a buck – or two at Dollar Tree, Walmart, Target, Macy’s or Saks for $5, $10, $30 or $50. The only difference is the retailer’s profit margin — very rarely is there a difference in quality when it comes to seasonal items, disposable items and sundries.
The season of peace and beauty feels very false once you know and remember to never forget that all those beautiful ornaments and decorations adorning almost every American home, restaurant or holiday venue are made by women, children, or men in sweatshops who are breathing in lead dust, paint fumes, plastic glitter, chemicals and pigments often for less than $30 per 12-hour shift; all that beautiful crap then warehoused, shipped, stocked and sold by non-living-wage, multi-job workers in the U.S.
Yet, while I’m there roaming the aisles or in the long line to check-out, I feel an overwhelming sense of community with my fellow city dwellers — the shoppers, the store’s workers and with all the workers of the World — particularly those in Yiwu, Zhezhang, China who are mass-producing a vast majority of all of this shit.
I also feel an overwhelming revulsion of the systems of ‘growth’ and development: capitalism, consumerism, and human and natural resource “management” which are uniquely undeniable in the fluorescent, depressive uniformity of the minimally staffed chaos found in a busy, urban dollar store,
Continue reading “Dickensian Dollar Store Christmas”if there was a Mother God,
if God was a Mother,
not “were”
this wouldn’t be
our reality
a dying planet
a deadened polity
mass extinction by chainsaw, net,
bolt-gun or bomb
they said, “96% of children in Gaza feel that death is imminent”
in Sudan, the famine is massive,
oh, this reaper, he is very discriminate
in Congo, there’s mass enslavement for minerals,
see the phone in her hand?! her hypocrisy?! she can’t claim to be innocent!
the Pacific’s so hot,
that it’s killed 4 million murres
while the Indigenous still invoke
“cultural rights” to baby seal furs
therefore,
God is either male — or, truer,
the God who created everything,
was the very first one extincted,
as Nietzsche,
and the german thinkers before him,
all, belatedly said,
Dear Americans:
When you finally realize that the solution to the economy — rent and groceries (not the stock market, not your investment portfolio), to health and healthcare, bodily autonomy and reproductive rights, the climate crisis, to environmental destruction — of land, air, and water and biodiversity, to wealth inequality, to systemic racism/white supremacy, to colossal, empire-sized military and police budgets — and endless overt and proxy wars and ongoing GENOCIDE — CAN NOT and WILL NOT be found in the BALLOT BOX — blue or red,
— then what?
then, what will you do? will you hope to ride it out quietly with whatever measure of privilege you possess (white male, white adult, middle-classed, usefully employed in the systems of government or institutions of political or corporate power)?
Will you finally rise up and do the necessary-yet-awful, brave, brutal and hard work to resist and fight — like every dignified human collective across history and even today — like the Palestinians? Like the Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho? Like the Maroons of Haiti — or will you be like the Germans — roll over, fall in line, bide your time — hope they come for your neighbor or coworker instead; maybe even turn them in?
This “nation is a massacre”, it always has been
for tens of millions of people right here of and on this land — and for hundreds of millions globally — even if that excludes you and yours (for now).
Enough of this profane American existence.
Enough already.
Continue reading “Open Letter to Americans”if you’re seeing this, you’re alive,
though dying — no matter your age, health, relative safety, relative comfortability —
on this living, though suffering and actively dying, planet
Earthlings and Earth together in a protracted hospice
right now, in these brief years, these grief years,
we are the “ever-living ghosts of what once was”
a “was” that most all of us alive this morning have never known as lived experience — save for the untouched tribes — 10,000 Uncontacted Peoples — 10,000 unsystematized, “uncivilized”
and the Ocean, and the few, still-standing Ancient One Trees; the untouched Desert, and the Mountains — even the youngest of them — The Tetons and The Himalayas, know what it “was” to be alive.
we are mere ghosts, walking dead.
This past Spring, I saw a Shepard Fairey exhibit at the local art museum: Shepard Fairey: Facing The Giant: 3 Decades Of Dissent.
Shepard Fairey no doubt has a seminal presence in street art — that is, art in public space — in sticker culture, in wheatpaste postering and in muralism. But, he’s also problematic as fuck — problematic to “fair use”, to social movements — and to art itself. I want to be more precise and say: he has an ejaculative presence in art in public space: his stuff is ubiquitously and frequently splattered — and sticky in the public consciousness — like a true Mad Men, note Ad men and marketers and PR consultants are not artists: they are not even tricksters — they are influencers, marketeers, cons, liars and grifters.
Fairey perhaps most famously helped to elevate Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign with his iconographic HOPE image — Fairey, (perhaps) like tens of millions of us, including myself, bought into Obama’s community organizer/activist history and “hope and change” schtick back in 2008. The shame and pain of decades of systemic, racialized disenfranchisement and inequity were transformed into an incredible electoral energy that was earnestly and hopefully deposited into Obama’s candidacy and presidency; it was then almost immediately disregarded and wasted — and ultimately, profoundly regretted by progressives. Only after his first term was nearly complete did “we” learn and process that Obama was a neo-liberal capitalist centrist cloaked in folksy voice and progressive-populist clothing — we witnessed him betray us again and again — and become a prolific drone-strike-executioner-in-chief as well as Wall Street’s and Rahm Emanuel’s punk-ass bitch.
I want to be more precise and say: he has an ejaculative presence in art in public space: his stuff is ubiquitously and frequently splattered — and sticky in the public consciousness.
The Obama HOPE image stands as a reminder and a joke of hope placed in any Democrat or Republican politician — any. Thank you for that, truly, Shepard Fairey.
But, some among us may still not know — that Fairey had misappropriated the photograph on which the iconic Obama HOPE poster was based, without credit or compensation to the copyright holder — falsely citing “fair use” — Fairey subsequently destroyed evidence about the actual unfairness of his use which amounted to theft, fraud and obstruction. Fairey settled with the copyright owner and also plead guilty for contempt of court.
Fairey has also reproduced and exhibited images of actual, bonafide Black power and liberation icons (Angela Davis notwithstanding) — and has been rightly interrogated about his cultural appropriation. On the surface, his work may pass as homage to great People and powerful movements, but it can also be interpreted as an artistic “black face” — and as an attempt to co-opt that which is not his in order to elevate his own vanilla, half-woke vibe — and of course, to cash-in. He remains defiant in his approach to cultural appropriation.
they will betray
with their
portfolio and corporate profit-taking,
dependence on and loyalty to government, organizations, institutions and electoral politics,
cultural appropriation, displacement, dispossession, exploitation, and gentrification of the historically and contemporaneously oppressed
greenhouse gas & carbon footprint privilege and exceptionalism,
ecocide by appetite, consumerism, and growth/development — physical, geographical and technological,
ultimate loyalty to the State and its forces for maintenance and protection — of their own wealth and property, and of private and corporate property, and of The System at the expense of People’s liberation and abolition movements
and finally,
by their neutrality to
particular
fascism and genocide.
this informal essay was inspired by Jeff Gibbs’ statement posted February 6, 2024;
I publish this, as per — to be publicly accountable and on record.
Development is development is development. All development damages the remaining already profoundly fragmented wilderness-ish habitat no matter what kind of development it is — no matter the seemingly innocuous or good intent: a paved bike path through forest, a solar array in the desert, an ayahuasca retreat center on a river in northern Illinois, a new organic farm.
“If you build it, they will come.” And then never stop coming and building.
We must stop destroying land to build more of anything — we must begin to reclaim and return land to nature and welcome, encourage, champion and personally embody the practices of degrowth.
An example of behavior:
“You should build a little rental cottage on your land over there for supplemental income and to sustain yourself through your golden years.”
– no, i will not build anything there ever — that’s where i set out the salt licks for the deer – by the three apple trees; no, that area is too near to where the blue racer lays her eggs every summer; no! as tempting as that false security is, i will live modestly and reject improvements for improvement’s sake — and embrace flaws and maintenance, and do with what i have — or without. this land is not mine; i merely temporarily co-occupy and humbly and gratefully tend and share this land.
also, there are no more golden years — to quote Beatrix Kiddo, “Bitch, you don’t have a future” — do you understand the science, the projections? let me help you to, i want to.
An opposite example of behavior:
Continue reading “Degrowth or die-out: an imperative for the insatiable species.”
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 