after Mayakovsky
In these United States
This Union
This US
Trammeled & trampled
& put aside
For later we will
For our country we will
For our cities
We will stan & star & stand & fight
To the south the rest of America has called us
Egypt & Syria & Greece have called us
But still we crouch waiting
150,000,000 feels so miniscule
150,000,000 means nothing
In the mouths of media
$150,000,000 is chump change
To Bezos & Bloomberg & Gates
The sock puppets are cracking their knuckles
& warming up their fingerlips
The mouths of knowing minds
Are setting stage for them
The mannerisms of these men
For whom all things are made
Mean nothing to the teamsters
& the teachers & the techs
Who made this winding world
The sycophants are waking up
Their fat bedraggled beast
Combing back his dyed blond hair
& powdering his face
Handing him his morning Diet Coke
& bloodless beef
& blue powder breakfast
On a mirrored TV tray
With gold leaf trim
& playing the Presidential Nose Flute
He comes alive
With powers only bestowed
By the weak upon the weak
They massage
The bulges of his body
& the surface of his smooth slick brain
They murmur unheard
Words into his ears
By the glow of 10 flatscreens
They angle
For positions
In this world of win & fail
They flail
To make sense
Of their gibberish success
But beyond the walls of Washington
& within the crumbling bricks
Of that selfsame foursquare swamp
150,000,000 sit & wait
& think & hate
Invisible in our quotidian
Machines we work
& we survive
We hear there is no 150,000,000
& all that matters is one man
This 45th man
Or perhaps the 46th
& when one of 150,000,000 says
NOT ME
We are told it means
ONLY I
The insult & the injury
Weigh on our bruised shoulders
With every else we wear & hear
With hatreds & with holdovers
With demons & with debts
& a whole haunted economy
Crushing & crashing down
We will rise
Somewhere somebody
Is right now
Pissing into a bottle
On company time
Somewhere someone
Is saying some
Thing to scare us
Of another world
& somebody screwing the cap on
& driving on
To the next delivery
We hear it is impossible
We hear a lot of gibberish
We will rinse it out
& somewhere else
Someone is
Slinging piss at the police
& someone else
Is soaking washcloths
For their burning face
While smokeless rooms assemble
Their Voltron riot cop
From Senator & Mayor & Investment Bank
S/he talks sideways
Clutching the sword & pearls
Of common sense
& dry mouths bow before this rusty champion
But we no longer believe
Those special effects
Knowing how sensible lies
Always hurt worst
We need no special tricks or scripts
To build our Devastator
We only need 150,000,000
In this country we call home
In the forests that are burning
In the fields that are rotting
In the cities that are starving
On the coastlines that are drowning
Through viral lungs & choking throats
We scream
With faces full of fire
For burning buildings
We need some kind of Joe
& José & Josey & Jane
& some just J or Jay
We need only J Doe
& J Roe & J Schmoe & J Blow
& if Lee & Prufrock are ready
To come along
We will know
From out of overheated warehouses
& frigid grocery stores
From off street corners
& factory floors
Let’s go
From fields & file cabinets & fishing boats
From escalators & classrooms
From high-rise safehouses
& hospital breakrooms
Let’s go
Let’s go
With milk jugs
With bows & arrows
With surgical masks
Let’s go
Let’s go
Let’s go
To the streets
To the windows
To tire barricades
Hong Kong & Santiago & Baghdad are calling
They were skinny & scared & without any hope
They were beyond the cops with their tear gas & rubber bullets
They slid & slithered & shot
They moved
They suffered
They thirsted
They quenched
They slicked the streets
Sent forth squads
Of chem SPCs with water and traffic cones
Sent signals from phones
To armies all over the world
Calling hungry to the 150,000,000
Calling J to rise from the scrapheap
Their toes ten thousand kids with clipboards
Their heels ten million Twitter threads
Their hair ten billion books
Their worn hands furious
From 400 years of war
Their stone face scowl eternal
In the Dakota wind
With murders of 4 centuries
Pinning bodies to the ground
With the hatred of yt settlers
Given all but brute force up
With the drag of indoor life
Mustered to the public square
Tell the future we needed
To save all our necks
Smoldering so long
To set it off
In 150,000,000 minds
& 300,000,000 hands
Grab yr sneakers
Grab yr wrenches
Grab machetes
Grab yr Glocks
Grab yr frying pans
& trashcan lids
& baseball bats
& lasers
Grab yr helmets & yr respirators
& yr kneepads & yr Kevlar
Grab yr bowling balls & broomsticks
& yr goggles & umbrellas
Grab yr Zippos & yr spray cans & yr mortars
Grab yr refund jars & yr rags
Fill the last red jug of gasoline
Let’s go
Let’s go
Let’s go
Let’s go
J Flores laughs that AutoZone is now a TAZ
Target gets a chevauchée
Sir this was an Arby’s
The 3rd Police Precinct of Minneapolis
Captured
& destroyed
The Richmond United Daughters of the Confederacy
Torched & tagged
Had it coming 150 years
Mayors shamed & shouted down
& heads hung slinking back
Radicals & squares together
Nationwide shouting
Abolish the police
Racist statues ripped
Worldwide
& thrown into the drink
Empty pedestals & ghost horses
Splashed blood red
Haunt dead avenues
Skate punks rule Ben Franklin Blvd
& a horde of thousands fill the space behind them
& with fierce glee
Black & red
Take J serious
& win the 2nd Battle of Seattle
The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone is & was
Secured against incursions
From Regime Occupied Safeway
Portland’s low-grade civil war ground on 100 nights
In Fishtown skinheads scoured the streets
& even Kenosha turned to combat
In North Philly someone kept dynamiting ATMs
While others argued strategy & tactics
We stuffed our ears
Against the TV lies
No longer joking about praxis
Lived in fireworks
With nothing left to fear
In every city burnt
Exploding air
& J himself
Hands big as Bucyrus buckets
Scoops stone gashes
Size of the Grand Canyon
Hollows out whole airfields
& plows through suburbs
As black-clad agents crawl from cellars
& climb aboard
Brings the screaming masses of skinny limbs to vulcanized lips
& tenderly blows kisses
The great machine
Quickly swats
The jagged wings of a B2
Leaving an expensive black stain
& the pearl-dripping Voltron is nowhere to be seen
With no one left to scold
& no paper left for budgets or orders
In the furrowed streets of yr own town
The turtle phalanx holds
The leaf blower cavalry sweeps in
& masked & helmeted you march forward swinging sticks
As pissed uniforms flee in the screeching night
The tacticool boys have all gone home
To their moms’ houses outside Chicago
Evans is running a gun safety training
& for once a corpse you know deserves it
Lies abandoned on the curb
Fuck around &
See
What
Happens
All over this sad stretched country
All over this sorry spinning world
They have fed so long
We feed on the carcass
Of a gone police belief
Power is the opposite of force
& in these dark & desperate days
A knife edge separates
A new dark age
From glorious collapse
If the end must always be beginning
We either take it over
Or we tear it down
Image from the Born Again Labor Museum.
