written in san francisco, late january

I'm watching an old chinese man hang
his laundry from the fire escape
across the street from city lights.

I'm sitting in the third-floor window,

and thinking
cities
make me ill.

i'm starting to deeply resent the past
as it's resuscitated here
and rebranded to serve the unseen
purpose of money-making.

Right now, the new Kerouacs
and Ginsburgs of California
are asleep in oakland,
worn out be the violence of the East Bay Police force,
asleep
in a city that serves treachery to those I love every day
like all cities.

It only stops when the cops call it
clear that the spirit has died
and only the body remains.

..

Debord is right --

the society of the spectacle desires no connection
with the flesh and heart of what's happening.
The sad husks I see wandering around the streets of San Francisco
would rather buy the images of corpses
with long-dead brains rotted below the topsoil who knows where
than love the sparking
wildness that has grown up in the shadow of their excising.

Where are the tourists in East Oakland?
Where the the microphones recording the argument
I woke up to through the floor on E 62nd street,
the angry slamming of words
over money and desire
that some how tumbled me and Adrian groggily into a conversation
about the lived realities of gender performance
and our engagements with attempts at embodying masculinity?



I'm not kidding. This really happened, but
Capitalism has been too quick to snatch us up
for our vests and haircuts.

It couldn't give a fuck about our words
our struggles
our solidarity and love.

..

Fuck everyone

everyone who thinks that money is enough,
who contents on fake flowers
who can't be bothered to sew one button
onto the lapel of a silk jacket.

Fuck waste, and fuck want.
Fuck deep need that is chronically unmet.
The market, the spectacle --

let's burn it.