Open Letter to Americans

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”

The Neutral, The Liberal and The White Moderate: lifestyle preservation by any means necessary


“Do not associate with the neutrals, because they will betray you someday, because they are too cowardly [and comfortable] to take a stand.”


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.


Continue reading “The Neutral, The Liberal and The White Moderate: lifestyle preservation by any means necessary”

deadly viper assassination squad / kill von Til

i read that an African green mamba
escaped its Dutch trafficker, a collector and captor of living beings

i am someone who never recovered
from reading Kingsolver’s “Poisonwood Bible”
i am someone who never recovered
from experiencing Alex Haley’s “Roots” on American television for eight consecutive nights

i am someone who imagines
an exquisite vengeance
for the fugitive, deadly snake
upon the low people of the Netherlands,
the hubris of those who would build higher and higher dams to contain the rising, wild seas
with transatlantic shipping wealth, every last cent: descendant of African blood money
while they continue in unironic chant for their tulipped nation’s and bland continent’s homogeneity:

make Europe great again!

while, i am someone who quietly incants:

may the viper in silent slither
at their coming fest of Sinterklaas
strike them in the street
as they joyfully parade
with their black-faced Zwarte Piet