syzygy

there is a long and incredible rich history of people who couldn’t vote or don’t vote being engaged in political movements that shape the political landscape and promote self determination and liberation. these include communicating with our families, friends, and coworkers; analyzing issues; doing political education in our communities; and finding ways and spaces to pressure elected officials after the elections are over. i find it really disheartening when people privilege the act of the voting in a booth over these longer term and more meaningful political acts, especially because they are more accessible to many disenfranchised people and people who’s ancestors experience disenfranchisement and other forms of oppression. and to be even more clear, disenfranchisement isn’t a simple of issue of who can vote and who can’t. trans people are barred from voting more often than not. ballots from earlier voters in black districts in FL will mostly likely be thrown out, voter id laws prevent many people who are considered “citizens” from being able to vote, so does the prison industrial complex, which ruthie gilmore talks about as “social death” so no, i dont believe its a privileged response to say the electoral system isn’t flawed, it was built this way i’m not going to validate it it with my vote, especially for the presidency and especially when people are engaged in other ways of building power (like the ones above). this country has been founded in part on the inability to people to vote for who is president of a colonized land, including my ancestors who were chattel slaves and yet counted as 3/5 for electoral college development. 2.5 million people in prison cannot vote right now. as cr points out “the limits of electoral participation become even clearer when we consider that voting rates in communities of color since the mid-nineties have increased right alongside the increase in imprisonment rates in those same communities. While legislation is being passed to criminalize immigrants in state after state, immigrant enfranchisement is not even on the table for discussion. Anything politicians can grant they can also either take away, or make largely irrelevant to people’s day-to-day lives.

nearer:breath of my breath:take not thy tingling
limbs from me:make my pain their crazy meal
letting thy tigers of smooth sweetness steal
slowly in dumb blossoms of new mingling:
deeper:blood of my blood:with upwardcringing
swiftness plunge these leopards of white dream
in the glad flesh of my fear:more neatly ream
this pith of darkness:carve an evilfringing
flower of madness on gritted lips
and on sprawled eyes squirming with light insane
chisel the killing flame that dizziliy grips.

Querying greys between mouthed houses curl

thirstily. Dead stars stink. dawn. Inane,

the poetic carcass of a girl

Poverty is not simply having no money — it is isolation, vulnerability, humiliation and mistrust. It is not being able to differentiate between employers and exploiters and abusers. It is contempt for the simplistic illusion of meritocracy — the idea that what we get is what we work for. It is knowing that your mother, with her arthritic joints and her maddening insomnia and her post-traumatic stress disordered heart, goes to work until two in the morning waiting tables for less than minimum wage, or pushes a janitor’s cart and cleans the shit-filled toilets of polished professionals. It is entering a room full of people and seeing not only individual people, but violent systems and stark divisions. It is the violence of untreated mental illness exacerbated by the fact that reality, from some vantage points, really does resemble a psychotic nightmare. It is the violence of abuse and assault which is ignored or minimized by police officers, social services, and courts of law. Poverty is conflict. And for poor kids lucky enough to have the chance to “move up,” it is the conflict between remaining oppressed or collaborating with the oppressor.

Awake in the mornin’
I wonder often
The lights are bright in the day
She decided to stay
I took her gently
Leap long and often
And she’s pale
but her parade will end at the train
She said, ‘come on baby
open your eyes’
Got to stop all that ringing
Essplode
Come on baby
Give us a rise
Not to get all that smiling
Essplode

And the air smells like wine
But when i’m fucking you lately
And you *inaudible scream*
Kissing your wall
But your mouth was okay
But if you wait for a minute
You’ll swallow your words
So just gently descend on a day
and a blanket may lay
Then finally you will open your eyes
When the pillows are piling
Esspolde

And the air smells like honey
But when i’m fucking you lately
and you *inaudible scream*
Kisses your wall
But your mouth was okay

A holistic healer
Found by the river
With a blank on my mind
I dropped the ball and i’m singing
this song like a teacher could say,
“Your lessons are long,
but you grow and remain.”
(Half a shadow you’ll be)
Walkin’ in the sunshine