benperidol

OCCUPY CLEVELAND WRITING ANTHOLOGY First Draft


The Spirit of Liberation

I had no idea that when
I exited the L-train
I'd see shot, 41
Aimed at an innocent African's body and brain

I picked myself up,
Took all the quarters in my cup
And flew back in time
To a constitutional convention
Just to see it turn corrupt

And that was the beginning
The very first day
Like when the original Africans became the first humans
and rose up to build civilizations on their two hindlegs

I was there

I saw Benny Goodman
Pull a white-supremacist
Jazz-jack
And expounded in pride when John Coltrane
Expropriated it back

I witnessed the Ariel Sharon-led attacks
And picked up a rock and scarf myself when Palestinians
Began to fight back

Yes, I was one of the first brothers on the block
To turn in my stack
And join a Panther Party with no choice but to be
Militant and Black

But that was the 70s and 60s
Let me jump back to the 90s of the 15th century

I was one of the Arawak
Of the West Indies
Who pointed to the pale-skinned invaders and shouted:
"We must resist these!"

I grabbed the illest weapon I could
Which was a crude stone hatchet
And of course I sobbed when that wasn't enough to fight off
The guns, germs, and steel of these Roman Catholics

It was also in the 90s
But of the the 20th cemtury
In the streets of Seattle, the police that I clashed with

I made the Mau Mau rebellion
Irresistible
For everyday Kenyons

I was the slave on the
Amistad
Who turned inward its cannons

And looking into the future
I will be there to overthrow these
New Mandarins

You can guarantee
I had a hand in
The movement for women's liberation
When they rammed in
Like swimming up a patriarchal stream
I was one of the most powerful and persistent salmon

I helped turn Red into Malcolm
Making him a man then

I carried banners in the struggle for labor
Alongside Emma Goldman

And I've fought to free every
Political prisoner from
Mumia to Jo Jo Bowen

When the Spanish people called for support
In their battle against Franco
I was flown in

I've taken many forms
From Durritti
To Ho Chi Minh

I am the unquenchable
But drinkable
Chaotic
But logical
Spirit of Liberation

My nationality was Haitian
When in 1791
We rose to build the first
Slave-led nation

In their journey to find me in 1917
I was the Russian peasants' and workers'
Inspiration

When I was called "Che"
I was the world's hottest guerilla sensation

To the oppressors
I warn:
You do not know what you're facing

My existence sparks resistance
With the profoundest persistence

And last night I was your cousin's cellmate
Urging him,
"Yo man, you need to get wit dis"

I bore witness
To the rhythmic banging of bongos
That gave birth to capoiera

I had my hands cut off
In the Congo
Only to have them grow back
On the body of a Nicaraguan girl
Named Sara
Who shouted "Fuera!"
A los yanquis
En el ano del 1983

I taught Bruce Lee how to
Focus his chi

It was me
Who instigated rebellion
Against the NYPD

I've gotten blind men to
Open their eyes
And for the first time:
SEE

For I
Is we
And We
Is Us
And I am
The bullets that freedom fighters guns bust

My victory is a must

For it is in me
The Spirit of Liberation
That we will one day trust

I cannot be defeated
Only beaten
And I cannot lose
Only experience loss

I will jump
From Mahkno
To Mao
From Parsons
To P. Newton
And from Nkrumah
To no one in particular
Whatever the cost

My angels
Are never perpendicular
Because eventually it will come to a point
In history

Where I will no longer be confined to a spirit
But embraced by reality
In order to conquer suffering and misery

I was the cigar that Fidel smoked
At Guantanamo Bay

And those same embers were used back
In 1871 in Paris
To ignite the cannons that kept
The bourgeoisie away

And today
Ghetto youth spit me through mics
Both
In and out of concrete walls surrounded by barbed wire and spikes

My hand
Forced Jews in Warsaw to pick up rifles
When Hitler youth called them "kikes"

I am simultaneously
The mouth that bites
And the hand that feeds

Like Johnny
I be planting the seeds of revolution
In the world's richest soil

My legend is guaranteed
To make this cold world
Boil

For like a coil
I spin in the forward direction
Of world-wide insurrection
Giving humanity an injection
Of myself

I can be found
On the bookshelf
But I have no price tag

I've been shot forth at
3,000 feet per second
from AK-47s to .357 mags
landing
dead center on my target

I'm Black like the back side of the sun
And Red like Scarlet

I unfurl myself in flags
And survive off of Victory Garden's harvests

To be enveloped by me is easy
Just ask John Brown or Nat Turner
Who wanted to make their slave rebellions
The largest

But to forget about me
Is definitely on of the most
Hardest
Things
That the caged bird sings

Because without me
You are left clueless what these songs of freedom bring

I've taken many forms
From Durritti
To Ho Chi Minh

I am unquenchable
But drinkable
Chaotic
But logical
Spirit of Liberation
- Juprise

J's Comrade Poem

Comrade,
Do you hear us out here?
Banging on drums
for justice
banging our feet
on the streets
we once marched arm in arm
before they
attacked us
banging our heads
against the wall
when
cops turn us away
computer screens tell little
and desks
refuse our calls?

Comrade
Know we
sleep uneasier
than you
you in your cell
not knowing
if they'll
visit you
in the night,
not knowing if that
that last smile of resistance
won't come
for too long
asking no one
but ourselves
to make this right.

Comrade
we don't pray for you
for we know
you were fighting
for no god or master
We don't beg
for your freedom
for we know
you would rather
stand on your feet
in a cell
than drop to both knees.

Comrade
know the world
cries out for more like you
and
if we let the world down
what do we have then?

Comrade
you are no Mumia,
no Che, no Kropotkin,
no Goldman
no celebrity of injustice
you are one of millions
and we know you wouldn't have it
any other way.

Comrade
know that while they call you
criminal
others will call you righteous
and millions will
join you in your
defiance.

Comrade
do you hear us?
do you hear us?
The world will hear us
and we need your voice,
comrade.
- Juprise

"Humanity has swarmed the streets with 1,000 maxims vaulted. Who has the ideal question? Who walks a path of dignity? Who can see the reckoning?
Brace for the long cold months. May the earnest endure all self-interrogation and elemental pressure. Never was a peaceful battle fought but still we cling to the rumor of trust, the promise of all clenched hearts disarming, entering a rest from desperate tribal works, no longer drowning with persistant force exerted, but rising in the way of shared magnification." - Colin Marshal Stevens, October 2011

The Wheel of Misfortune
- Lisa Dabrowski

Two faced charlatans
Preach gospel
At one end
Of the door
Killing women
And children
At the other end
They pause
To say Grace
Over a Soldier
Who fought
A senseless war
Young lives lost
All the way around
Women
Children
Soldiers
And they say
It’s God’s way
The Right Way
They spin a deadly wheel
The Wheel of Misfortune
With no regard who it lands on
This is the game they play


THE ETHIC

In the morning
before the sunrise
I hear the mishmash of birdmass
tweeting from the variegated tapestry
sky breathing,
perched on roots
these two-way trees of earth
In the morning
before the sunrise
before the skelter of the day
breaking into a billion bits
of radiant diffraction
cars steaming ahead
on adjacent highway
thoughts
obligations
appetites
offices
homes
and I know
what it means
only to be a grind
for the dime
sometimes
Rather set some practices
for a cultivated day
like filing nails
crossing legs
falling into gentle
unfolding steps
splay in thorough disarray
with grace
at the end of the day
Working what is correct
with the Universe
I mean
I find so much
the grains of this till
happy, some soil
happy, a bit of toil
I'm rich
and I see this
I mean, I'm not rich--
monetarily--
not very
My metaphorical paycheck
is literal peace of mind
and satisfaction of hand
into a reservoir that aggregates
into a reservoir of safety seatbelt for the planet
into a reservoir of cultivation tinkering with constrained pace
into a reservoir of restraint sating the appetite cleanly
into a reservoir for children
clay trusting, unhindered
into a reservoir for animals
nose sniffing consensus knowers
because animals
have children
too
Rich and rich, human and non
there's only one planet
and there's how we all are to be with it
more like savers
less like spenders
more like investers
Golden rule is growing
Do all us rich people
know this too?
~ Lady


Renaissance

I don’t understand, that you don’t understand?
The fact, is that a pact has been intact long before we decided to act.
So to reveal and steal the truth back, is in fact, the sac-rament.
To implement and reinvent ourselves before we’re thrown into crates and stock shelves.
The compell-ing riff is to sniff and equate that we’ll use our love to tackle this hate.
Which is bait, dangled by the empirical tyrannical state, that may take us back to a prehistoric date.
Which is fine, cause we’ll embrace and halt, not by fault, admiring the irony of the everlasting vault.
The cosmos cane, seen from Oslo’s terrain as curiosity stimulates the center of our mother fucking brain.
Inertia in tune like a metallic steel train, we gawk at the moon coasting right through the pain.
But the stain left on our existence today would shame the minds that molded this perspective plane.
As the attempts occur to ruthlessly reign, steal the ideals from the pure, reveals our compassion for strangers which help us heal.
We care for each other. Big Brother. My sisters, brothers, fathers, and Mother. We’ll smother, you.
You’re through. Meditating on what’s true. As we realize, the demise is merely fiction to our awakened eyes.
Our emotions, set in motion, can not be stymied. Please try me. Your hatred unifies thee.
I’m dying and you’re trying the embarrassing multiple ways of lying. As you spin stories,
That bore me. I’m snoring. In my dreams we’re all fucking soaring. Stratosphere.
Join us here. We just came back from the moon. The ride was smooth, like a criminal.
We’re in-it-all. The trees, grass, you, me, many mammals. We’re animals. Cognitive cannibals.
Getting it all? Can you see!? You can’t steal me, from me. Inside my mind we’re quantifying.
Happy to view the hatred on me, as peace begins to spread like a universal soliloquy.
Rectifying our limitless limit. Objectifying oppression, the light that’s “dim-lit.”
As if, oh shit, nowhere to go, you’re stiff. The manure and sewer, will be your only escape maneuver.
It’s evident, your-time-spent, on this flat sphere, was centered around games of “instill fear.”But, a tear, I shed, for you and your souls. Watch ours awaken and mend the wounds of control.
We console, and spin our moral compass that obtains, the enlightening knowledge that understands and sustains.
Our existence. Come with-us. We’ll embrace, as long as you attempt forgiveness.
Address-us, respect-us, because we’ve already told you to “expect-us.”
Undress-us to connect-us. Evil lurks to resurrect-us. I bet.
You getting it yet? “The money saved” oppressed the masses but dug your grave.
And I’ll wave, goodbye, as chances were lost to right your own eyes.
How convenient? So lenient. To the point where I can’t even believe-it. Now step back, and leave-it.
And watch our greatest human achievement. As we’ve begun the process of “universal re-conceivement.”
- Meta


Conscious Dreamers

During this holiday season,
Questions of rational thought.
More are finding a reason,
Pushing against their plot.
____
Same intuitive connections,
Are made worldwide.
The image of insurrection,
Higher, becomes the tide.
____
Weight of knowledge is heavy,
A thought does have mass.
Human beings will levy,
Regardless of social class.
____
Push through this burden,
And overcome it all.
Fearless as Tyler Durden,
Watch the empire fall.
____
The pain will soon leave you,
Encompassed, serene.
None will deceive you,
As you lie awake and dream.
- Meta


cubicle nest

Palatial pyramid of coffee cups
clutter a calico desk
a cubicle nest
all the walls are grey and rude
AND WHEN I LOOK AT THE FLOOR IT LOOKS LIKE I COULD FALL THROUGH
will I answer your query?
Swift and surely, what is your next request
my abilities and soliloquys are all at your behest
- Tomi Dedalus Chinaski Jayman

~ ~ ~
How to be better?
There’s anger in my ego
Ego in my need
-- Steven B. Smith
~ ~ ~

Our Daily Scaffold

We're but a game of hide and meat
deceptive fog bequeathed by heat
to cheat the sheath of self by soul
to eat and propagate our goal

We rise in wonder, wander off
our reason tries with labored laugh
to catch our lies of lip within
and patch our eyes of if and when
-- Steven B. Smith

strike anywhere

all too often i find myself thinking like a fascist.
Let's try some comedy.
i could write 100 humorous, in the most precise sense of the word, ways to dispatch with the various authoritative structures in the US, but what would that change?
same old bag of tricks, and all that really seems to change is the body count.

to strike quick then
disappear before the dead
are missed, to be seen
only in results, never
before the smoke clears.
when i squint the battle
lines are already drawn,
a simple case of us and
them - of course many
are still on the sidelines,
pondering right and wrong.
and they tell me there're
plenty of fascist anarchists
racist queers, tyrannical
muslims and wealthy blacks,
wealth everywhere, if only
you're willing to strive, to
make the USA great again.
i rank these amongst those
still lost in the refrain of
history, finding and losing
their ways. when a man
kills socialists and rails against
islam, patience, compassion,
this person is said to be in
defense of western civilization,
a pioneer of progress. But we are
at war with such a civilization, a
total war - us poor, imprisoned,
blacks, latinos, women and queers,
muslims, socialists, anarchists
and everyone who has doubts but
strains to see - every little child
and martyred soul lost in the cracks
in-between the shattered oil avenues,
and the endless blocks of addiction.
to strike, knowing what we're
building in the wake of rubble.
one day we will not have to
disappear. one day the strike
will never end.
- Ben Peridol

A month later, Chile erupted in its wildest riots in years, with 874 people arrested in student protests against the privatized education system—the same day that Standard & Poor’s downgraded the United States credit rating. Immediately afterwards, riots broke out in the UK in response to the police murder of Mark Duggan. Far from subsiding, the unrest generated by the crisis was ricocheting back and forth across the globe. - excerpted from http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/recentfeatures/nightmares.php


reading list:

ghost in the shell (koestler)

genealogy of morals

hagakure

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_the_Heike

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsurezuregusa

et cetera


books recommended to me:

http://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Infinity-Conversations-Philippe-Nemo/dp/0820701785/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328501893&sr=8-1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totality_and_Infinity

http://www.amazon.com/Otherwise-Than-Being-Beyond-Essence/dp/0820702994

1. Fight for liberation. Nothing more, nothing less. State recognition in the form of oppressive institutions such as marriage and militarism are not steps toward liberation but rather towards heteronormative assimilation.

2. A rejection of capitalism, imperialism, and all forms of state power.

3. Actively oppose oppression both in and out of the "movement." No oppressive behavior is to be tolerated.

4. Respect a diversity of tactics in the struggle for liberation. Also, do not solely condemn an action on the grounds that the state deems it to be illegal.

concealment only in the strict sense of hiding our tracks.

hiding our lives, masking our experiences, pretending this 'i' is all that really matters. these too are aspects of concealment, and, since we are only ever what we pretend to be, we should pay attention to our choice of words.

but i have always struggled with the dark underbelly of the world, the seemingly endless depths which humanity indulges in. in a world so unforgiving, i can find it in myself to understand and forgive any who want to be hidden. in a world that may murder you because of who you love, or your view of life, tends to be a world we'd rather not wear our experiences, our truth, openly in. but Pope Bob often spoke of how this too is a step in the greater scheme, that the neophites which haunt our daily lives are forced down the evolutionary path because of our brilliant new realities, and so on. come along, little tad poles. and what of neoteny?

. . .

http://youtu.be/k8VSN6rnbhY

http://www.sacred-texts.com/fort/index.htm

http://earthfirstnews.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/yule-newsletter-2012.pdf

http://www.subgenius.com/ts/hos.html

. . .

from http://stephaniemcmillan.org/ :

One storm, two responses

In 2005, Hurricane Wilma crossed over South Florida. The destruction was substantial. A telephone/electric pole lay across my back yard, its transformer trailing wires. Most of a large tree had come down on my neighbor’s roof. Branches were everywhere. Bits of the corrugated fiberglass roof of a plant nursery littered the ground ten blocks away. The electricity stayed off for eleven days. The municipal water supply stayed off for three.

I still had to go to work. As I made my way around town on my bike in the following days, I saw a difference in the way the people of my neighborhood and the people of the next neighborhood over handled their respective difficulties.

In the best of times, my neighborhood – mostly populated by short-term renters who were only around when not out working on boats for weeks or months on end – enjoyed little-to-no social cohesion. Few people even recognized each other as neighbors. Each was generally on his or her own.

Residents made a rather pathetic scene as they used soda cans to scoop water from street puddles into plastic kitchen garbage bins, to use for flushing toilets. The general mood was testy. It was hot and humid. Everyone was sweaty, with no showering in the foreseeable future, and food was rapidly spoiling. A fight broke out at a nearby gas station over ice.

Did I mention that it was hot? It was hot. The air was heavy with moisture steaming from the soaked ground. And of course there was no salvation to be had from fans or air conditioners. So everyone opened their windows wide and prayed for a breeze.

The first night, the guy who lived behind me ran a generator. Lying on my bed in the dark (bored to tears, no light to read by), I waited for the roar to end. By 2 a.m., I realized it wasn’t going to stop. All hope of sleep died in a spasm of frustrated rage.

The next day I saw him cleaning up his yard. I didn’t want to start the conversation by accusing him of self-centered jerkitude – I assumed the best of intentions. “I noticed your generator was on all night. Do you have some sort of medication you need to keep cold, or…?”

“Nah, I wanted to watch the game,” he replied.

“Well,” I ventured, “It’s very noisy, and I’m sure I’m not the only person around here who can’t sleep when it’s running. Would you mind turning it off at a reasonable time? Midnight, say? I have to get up early in the mornings to go to work.”

He glared. He turned away. His generator ran all night, every night, for the next ten nights.

In response, I could do nothing but seethe. There was no law against running generators. He was bigger than me, and he didn’t care about the needs of anyone else. (I fantasized at great length about smashing his generator with rocks, a bat, or a barrage of bullets, but because I had complained he would have known instantly who’d done it, and was I prepared to go to war with him if he came for revenge? I decided not.)

* * *

Contrast this with the neighborhood next to mine. Long-time residents with families. People knew one another by sight, at least, probably because they were always out walking their dogs or jogging.

By the second morning, as I passed through, I saw a small group of people talking in the park. I didn’t stop.

On the third day, I saw them again. The group was larger than the day before. They had a sign board set up. One man was gesturing toward it, and announcing something to the others. I stopped to listen.

They were having a meeting. They were working things out.

The man told his neighbors that the sign board was there for them to exchange messages with one another in the absence of phone service. They could post requests for things they needed, and those who wanted to help could do so. They could combine forays to the store to save gas. They could share food that would otherwise spoil. Each morning, they were to have a meeting to address their concerns.

One person said, “There’s someone on my block who runs a generator all night.”

Several people grumbled – they too had been disturbed by this. One declared, “We have to make a rule: unless it’s an emergency, no generators after 10 p.m.”

So they made a rule. A small committee formed instantly, volunteering to have a chat with the offender. The neighborhood had spoken.

* * *

I learned several lessons from this:

1) A group of people can meet each other’s needs together much more efficiently than individuals can meet their own needs separately.
2) Cranky self-centered jerks respond better to social pressure than to individual complaints.
3) For a group of people to be organized in a common effort, it takes just one person to decide to take responsibility for initiating it.
4) If no one does that, it won’t happen by itself.
5) Once that first person steps up, then it’s not that hard to persuade others to cooperate in a mutually beneficial endeavor. They want to do it.
6) It’s good to get to know your neighbors before crisis hits.

i see a man, perhaps my self in a past, or a future, in a field of corpses after a battle lost, alone, the Enemy closing in.
Rays of the sun pour into my eyes, penetrating my body deeper than the jeering pain of burns and other battle wounds. In the glory of this experience, the unspeakable, blinding beauty of the sun, I take a dagger, with both hands raising it to the sun, and bring it down, driving it through my heart.
Nothing has gone undone, passing, satisfied, into sublime abyss.

A gray, pathetic figure collapses in a field, unnoticed.

http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer101.html