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.

April 15, 2020November 10, 2022

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

April 10, 2020April 9, 2023

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

March 28, 2020March 20, 2021

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

August 9, 2019April 9, 2023

The Lights Flickering, Vichy Detroit

The lights flickered again and we laughed about it. I wondered if they were flickering up the street at the house. The kids wouldn’t notice in the unabashed chaotic joy of a sitter.

Our kids were, for the most part, unaware of the war or the occupation. Of course, they seemed more aware of it than the majority of the grown folk sitting round us. The lights flickered again but Badu didn’t skip a beat. Another high end restaurant, a facade, built on a failing infrastructure. Flooded basements.

For me, a great deal of it can be traced back to Horselover Fat. While my contemporaries were jacking off to Ayn Rand, I was reading VALIS and running needles through my flesh to feel something, anything.

The Empire Never Ended.

Fat, through divine chance and laser beams began to see Roman facades superimposed on Southern California streets. For me it’s Vichy France, fascist occupation, that I see strewn out through the city of Detroit. The strategic expansion of Vichy shops, Vichy restaurants, and the shutting off of water to Black women and children. Buckets to the river.

My wife’s eyes were lit up, she was glowing, the wine coming on as we talked. Only special occasions would bring us to a place like this in times like these. I was attentive to her but also tuned into the energetic and aethyric flow. Gazing throughout the room I thought I saw a Robber Barron, one of the wealthy Nazi collaborators at the bar. The lights flickered again. I glanced at my wife and laughed, looked back and he was gone.