Year: 2020

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Looking Back and Forth

I went looking for the others, those like me.  But they turned out to be too much so for my liking.  I could stand them only slightly more than I could stand myself.

Our very existence is an expression of cowardice, of weakness.  The denial of Darwin, the rejection of reason; faith unfounded.

Blindly accepted, indoctrination unseen, unquestioned, unopposed, mother to child, diseased and dismissed, unfixable, broken.

Landfill material sold as green pastures. Forgiven or forgotten, formaldehyde in the formula, fluoride in the fountains, flaws in the fabric; feedback blotting the fibonacci.

Replicated, I fell into it…

I remember he would say; pray for me, but don’t pray for me to change.  If you pray for my conversion you are cracking your creed, laying layers on your own conceived damnation, and insulting me and mine.  

That what I worship and work with lost language long ago.  The closest thing I’ve got to gods are my gods.  You can’t recognize them as I do, see what I see and still see yours in the same light.  

That is not due to their or my superiority, it is due to their very nature and the angle of the light.  Just as any meaningful recognition of your God on my part would sully the waters with mine.  Leave me and them be.

My ways are wild.  My universe muddy but I’ve been overly mild in my approach so as to not make too much of a mess of the space we share.  

Truth be told, he’s a coward, like me.  He would correct me and claim survival. That it is more important to stay alive, strategic and chill, than crash and burn.

He knew from the very moment that ‘he’ began.  All claims of unawareness are a sham. Even the he himself was to hide multiplicity. Identity and personality were created based on negating their very existence.  He knew how and why he was here.  He knew what was going to happen.  He knew from the visions, even in the womb.  The hows, however, were a mystery.  Going forward and back there was self-imposed blindness; some repairable, some wiped at the source.  Offline moments, blackout, gnosis. Intentional all; self-imposed butchery.

If anyone got to know him well enough he would have a tell, but few did.  Most of those who did ran away.  I remember the days when he would writhe, shift, change, and howl through the night.  A real horror show and I remember those strange witches that tried to hold him.  The two that tried to trap him and the three that set him free.

There is a church upriver of Kebek the Europeans built using their devil as a steed. One of the high witches took me there to bind me, to see the devil’s rocks in the church walls.  To walk the path of the hooves that dragged stone from ships on the so-called St. Lawrence. Rather than tame, the church, the path, the road, the river, served to set me free.  The spirit storms on the shores of Kaniatarowanenneh that night revealed a pattern and passed a key.  He thought they’d die, but they escaped through crevasses, the river, and into the sea.

© EschatonLife

This piece is included in Eden Bloom  Eschaton Life

 

 

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Misanthropy Embarrassed

When it comes down to it, though I am hyper critical of our current state, ultimately I have some level of faith and hope in humanity.  My misanthropy is embarrassed. It’s the greatest curse I’ve been given, serious pandora shit. It was there before the kids, visions of a kinder gentler me, massage, yoga, health food, but the kids sealed it.  It’s bad form to seed where you know they mow without a strategy to fuck up the machinery.

Out beyond these dogmas,
right left ideologies,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

A large part of this work, this parenting/radical urban planning that I’m attempting to influence, is rooted in a mandate to live a mutually beneficial life without recourse to dogma, religion, or ideology.  This stems not from ego or moral superiority, but rather the realization that, due to my choices and the current state of Detroit, my future, and my children’s future, though admittedly privileged, are interwoven with Blackness and poverty.

In the tall grass, overcome,
the world wide within,
one and all, no kingdoms to control.

It doesn’t have to be that way?  Due to my work I’m extremely aware of how passive/non-critical racial spacial integration and economic status without self-awareness can put one in service to corporate domination and white supremacy.  Aspects of this service are mandatory with a pulse in this place, but there’s room for some ethical/moral play.  It doesn’t have to be this way, but if it were not it would be the other, and I’ll no longer lend my silence in service to that.

Paradise rekindled,
struck between eye for eye
and you and me.

I’ve sold my soul a few times and still rest my head as required in beds made.  Recently, I’ve tried to set a better example and keep those in my care off the ledger all together.  For me, this is what an active approach to transition looks like; a somewhat calculated attempted decent from hyper/disaster capitalism. There is a method to my madness; cull faith, court hope, and seek solidarity beyond ideology. Abolitionist intent to what end?

Supremacy propped toppled
by blades of grass, trees, water, air
once again proud animals, beings, we.

© EDEN BLOOM 2023

This piece is included in Eden Bloom Eschaton Life

 

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The Crust and the Glitch

This is the beginning of the never ever, the once and…, the once over.  The jumping off point, from here to where?  When?  Now!  Go!

The crossover between being thankful you’re not at the wheel and realizing you’re tied up and you’re in the trunk.

This is the start of a poem I finished when I was 16.  It attempts to explain:

This is the crust of acid sexuality, this is my death.

The ultraviolence, the end of science, blinding with fundamental flaws. Assumptions.

The ever-lasting vices, lies and lysergic, luminous, laughing and cracked.

Let me tell you about my mother and father. The prince and the pauper. The chosen blood, hardened, raping, mixing with her unclean.

      I am produced. 

You’ll know why you don’t have to tell me this is a class war. You’ll never need to convince me this is about toxic male white supremacy.

My fingers move and tap when I think in time.

I may even up the ante with my ‘capitalism is a botched attempt to domesticate the human animal’ shtick. 

The excess of me, us, we, stains on car cushions, splattered across hotel room walls, smashed up against bathhouse mirrored glass.

The pudding’s proof, left out, sour, molding, bitter and I bit back. Sacrilege, aghora, anathema, counter attack.

It’s on repeat in the other room if you want to go watch. I think I’m still tied to the bed, it’s a real horror show, it’s a mess. 

© EDEN BLOOM 2023

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I’ve been watching you and yours for years

Get it straight
I’m a gun for hire
I’m NOT an activist
 
They say I’m an organizer, whatever
I’m just using skills picked up along the way
to try to help some folk and get my next check.
 
I’ve monetized my anger
I’m not a do-gooder
A ne’er-do-well trying to keep my family fed
It keeps me honest and on point
 
Say what you will about me
I’m just doing my J O B
but If you treat the people
I work for and with poorly
You go on my shit list eternally
 
And I’m down with restoration,
for second chances, even again and again
But I’ve been watching you and yours for years
documenting your disregard
for people with whom you disagree
party politic has trumped your humanity.
 
When you rep as a white guy and you attack other people
without respect, without explanation, just self-important certainty
is it so unimaginable that some call it white supremacy?
©EschatonLife
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As goes Detroit, so goes the World


As goes Detroit, so goes the world. It’s a portal for global transformation, but not the way you’ve heard of or will.

It’s a unique node on the construct, a place where the water turns, where crystals churn underneath, where the blood in the river’s still heard.

And the people struggle on and on against hundreds of years of white folk, friend and foe, their systems set on control.

It’s where the other possible world is just another already given away. “Judas!” they say, but even they are military, industrial and complex.

New parties for new workers, re-imagined compliance, makers spaced, DIY cookie-cutter semantics and first-time-stoned philosophies toward a more humane inhumanity, a more just injustice. 

Propped up by credentialed dinosaurs shitting corpses, calling gold.  Lapped up and lauded by legacy-read and lineage-bread minions, gilded and rearing to go.  Offspring of infiltration, intergenerational co-intel pro-fessionals.

As goes Detroit, so goes the world. A portal for global transformation, but not the way you’ve heard of or will.

A unique node on the construct, a place where the water turns, where crystals churn underneath and the blood in the river’s still heard.

And the people struggle on and on against foe and friend, trying to compress and contain what constant, breaks out of their grasp, another possible world that they cannot control. 

© EschatonLife

This piece is included in Eden Bloom Eschaton Life

 

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Turn the water back on, make it safe, cancel the debt and make it affordable.

These have been the calls from many of those on the frontline of the water wars in the Great Lakes; just turn the water back on, make it safe, cancel the debt, and establish an affordability plan for low- and no-income people going forward. These calls, coming from Detroit, Flint and other cities has been heard across the world, even by the UN[i], but has not been heeded on by those with the power to make change.

Now that we are in a pandemic, we’ve all learned more about public health and how we’re all connected. Now people are suddenly hearing the call differently. Now those in power are taking action to address the impending threats of this crisis. But are the changes being made disingenuous?

Two weeks ago, in response to the impending crisis and a Joe Biden rally in Detroit, Mayor Duggan announced a program to restore water service. The state of Michigan plans to cover the $25 reconnection fee and service would be a flat rate of $25 a month through the crisis.

While it is vital that our families have access to water to wash their hands, it turns out that this program also forces residents into a plan that demands payment when the crisis is over. To get turned back on many are being made more vulnerable to past debt with no water affordability plan to keep them connected.

While it is necessary to cut checks and provide resources for those who’ve lost work and been impacted it is also vital that we immediately make systemic changes. The good news is that the people who have been pushing against this for years have also been working hard to make a strong case to do this differently. All the research has been done and real affordability plans exist that can be adopted. The resources and existing contracts for shut offs can be reallocated to turn-ons and vital infrastructure repair for safety.

These actions, and other efforts to reverse inhumane policy will greatly reduce stress on public health in Detroit, throughout the region and across state. These actions will increase the health and resilience of all people while making sure that those in poverty do not disproportionately suffer and take the brunt of this crisis. This is reasonable, logical, scientifically sound, economically responsible and humane.

Please immediately contact Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and other decision makers across the state to demand that they take action to turn the water back on, make it safe, forgive the debt, and establish an affordability plan for low and no-income people going forward.

Sign the Petition

More:
We The People of Detroit https://www.wethepeopleofdetroit.com

#TurnWaterOn
#KeepWaterOn
#MakeWaterAffordable

[i] https://www.michiganradio.org/post/un-team-says-detroit-water-shutoff-program-violates-human-rights