My dear friend, of two intense, revelatory years of intimate and prolific communication
Category: Chicago
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
political & ideological opposition is meaningless now
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”on Christmas eve
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”Dickensian Dollar Store Christmas
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.
ironically & hilariously,
still made in the USA!
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”HOW DID CRAZY HORSE VOTE ? — Joffre Stewart
HOW DID CRAZY HORSE VOTE? vers. 2024
a posthumous collab with Joffre Stewart, most respectfully & reverently
Which party would be better for Israel?
Red or Blue?
Trick Question!
Both, that’s who!
Which party would be better for The People?
Red or Blue?
Trick Question!
Both, hate you!
Did CRAZY HORSE vote his Lakota People out of Dispossession and Genocide?
Did BLACK PEOPLE vote themselves out of Enslavement and American Apartheid?
Did WOMEN vote themselves IRREVOCABLE Equal and Reproductive Rights?
Have the SOLUTIONS to human dispossession, oppression ever been secured at the polls
with votes of RED or BLUE?
LISTEN:
REVOLUTION has been the ONLY DURABLE AMERICAN SOLUTION.
Yet, childlike, playing at history,
& with the future
You color some ovals, You check a box,
And, deny this
TRUTH.
Continue reading “HOW DID CRAZY HORSE VOTE ? — Joffre Stewart”Becky
she insisted we roll the car windows down
while the a/c was cranking
and she just kept it cranking
in her mid 90s silvery Saturn sedan,
second-hand from her parents,
three little boys crammed in the back seat
a baby girl not yet in her belly,
as we drove down the Kennedy, then the Dan Ryan, heading to the Skyway
for our weekly day-trip
to the southwest Michigan coast
our cooler stuffed with tarragon chicken salad sandwiches for us, fried chicken drumsticks for them, at least two pounds of black cherries, pickles, diet cokes, limes, and capri-suns — the box of white cheddar cheez-its hardly ever made it all the way to the Warren Dunes on the ride from Chicago
for the Lake, the beach, the inlet hike to the clay pit,
the Dune climb, always hoping for some gentle, yellow-flag waves, and the long, eastern time-zone Sun’set over platinum blue water
perplexed, delighted by this novelness, by her unconvention:
a/c on our skin — and summer air blowing in our hair?
Continue reading “Becky”
free palestine: “SHALOM not [A] napalm BOMB”
“SHALOM not [A] napalm BOMB”
Chicago
poet, outsider artist,
street philosopher & pamphleteer,
anti-political theorist & activist,
anti-zionist,
war-and-tax-resister
&
pacifist-anarchist
June 1994
“No state exists by right, they come to exist by force, and then justify their existence after the fact.”
- Geo Maher
le claire [street] in june
originally published june 17, 2016, revised june 11, 2023
* please visit the website/app Falling Fruit to add a fruiting tree that is located and accessible in the public way to the foraging database for others.
A clear glimpse
A clear thought
on this clear June night
Of age,
and Alzheimer’s
the old-timer’s disease
A clear memory recorded and archived tonight
An acute awareness of myself
tonight, in time and place
a new track to play on loop for a listener in my future life
a husband, friend, or son
a caregiver, a kind one
a visitor, volunteer, or nurse,
a grandson, or maybe — no one
A reddish dog, eating mulberries
from the sidewalk in shadows
Mottled concrete in the dim light of a city street lamp
obscured by the canopy of that beautiful, June, fruit tree
A woman, middle aged, seems so young, even a tad pretty, in her mind’s eye now
Stretching her still strong body upward for plump, dark berries
Reaching for branches trimmed too high by the urban foresters
or arborists or surgeons, I forget what they’re called
On her tippy toes
grabbing, pulling, picking
squeezing the dog’s leash between her thighs
don’t let him get loose in the dark, don’t let him get skunked in the dark
contorted mulberry tree at night
Some of the best ones are lost in the awkward tussle
before she can palm them, save them, taste them
She triggers a reverberative rain from boughs on high
That precise, delicate sweetness of the bounty in her mouth
The dog’s belly full of the ripe windfall
sustained by both gravity and this woman
His name was Woody, or Digby, I think
He used to climb into our sleep
Smashed and whole
The street, sidewalk and cars stained
by the impressive purple mess
the dark grass hiding perfect treasures for doves tomorrow morn
She and that dog,
They were urban foragers and gleaners in June.
All month long, her fingertips, feet and lips
tinted with their fuchsia dye, it didn’t even once occur to her to check his paws
A clear, recollection of acute melancholy:
this day — that day was also her son’s birthday //
The first birthday he ever spent away from home, away from her — in Nebraska, or was it Alaska?
That glorious tree, that good dog, that golden boy
2023 addendum:
a roof with a view | baptism by kettling
Eleven years ago this week, ahead of the NATO Summit in Chicago in May 2012, I wrote messages with spray paint on the roof of my home in my Portage Park, Chicago neighborhood for world leaders to read as they traveled in military helicopters passing low and loud overhead en route to the Summit venue at McCormick Place.
(there’s always enough money for war)
TO ONE ANOTHER
& TO OUR EARTH
On May 20, 2012, I also attended the mass protest and marched in opposition to NATO and its global hegemony and destruction.
Also on that day, in one of the most profoundly moving and humbling experiences of my life, while standing shoulder to shoulder with thousands of others, I listened to personal stories of war — of killing, death, rape, horror, pain, guilt and grief — from both U.S./NATO soldiers and the victims of those wars.
I witnessed from just yards away, as Jacob George, by then a warrior, no longer a soldier, along with warrior Scott Olsen (a former Marine, Iraq War veteran, Occupy veteran, and Oakland Police terror survivor) and 43 other war veterans-turned-warriors tossed their military service medals across the CPD police-enforced, Secret Service barricade toward the protected U.S./NATO generals, the policy-makers, and world “leaders” comfortably ensconced and insulated at McCormick Place at the NATO Summit in their gathering of war-makers.
“A warrior is someone who takes his orders from the heart, not some outside force."
- Jacob George
The U.S./NATO war generals, in cowardice, would not agree to meet in person with the men and women who served in their wars and conflicts to ceremoniously accept the return of those unwanted, inglorious war service medals. Those medals were publicly rebuked and surrendered to the asphalt at the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Cermak Road nonetheless.
on September 17th, 2014
Jacob George
died by suicide.
After the act of disavowing the war medals, We, The People were told to disburse and vacate the area — when we didn’t — and attempted to march forward toward McCormick Place to encounter the World’s warmakers face to face — or at least be seen and heard by them, several hundreds were kettled by Chicago cops and Illinois State Police — resulting in resistance by — “We, The People” with physical and verbal clashes, police violence and protester arrests.
Chicago cops at the behest of Mayor Rahm Emanuel insulated the NATO warmakers from being held accountable by the People who came from across the globe to confront them with the deaths of civilians, the occupation of foreign lands and the trillions of dollars spent on conflict, war, destruction and death, and with personal accounts and statistics of military rape, PTSD and
veteran death-by-suicide.
Neologism: Dendronglow
Dendronglow on Twin Sycamore Trees.Setting November Sun.
Dendronglow on Twin Sycamore Trees.Setting November Sun.
Dendronglow : The rosy light of the setting or rising Sun on trees, especially urban trees.
akin to Alpenglow.
November Neologism
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 