Every time people start to rise up, a whole buncha problematic mess gets thrown around regarding VIOLENCE.
So, what is "violence" really?... It's the use of force. Plain and simple.
What makes folks uncomfortable (who are otherwise comfortable in this system) is that UPRISING IS A SOMETIMES VIOLENT (read: forceful) REACTION TO SYSTEMATIC VIOLENCE: Yes, just like the Hunger Games...
Thus, there are many types of violence...
The fact that we are paying taxes that are funding the genocide and ****** of people of color (here and abroad) is violence.
People with guns (former slave patrols and overseers, now cops) who come from outside our community and treat our folks as criminals on the daily is violence.
Capitalism, i.e. wage/property/ecology-based exploitation in the name of profit is violence.
The fact that LA County spends more $$ than anywhere in the world on prisons and police is violence.
The fact that the US locks up more of its own people than any other country on record is violence.
US aiding/funding the genocide of Palestinians at the hands of Israel is genocidal violence.
From Congress, to the boardrooms, to the classrooms, from the gaze, to the unwanted touching, to the ****, to the pay, Patriarchy everyday, is violence.
A few people jacking some **** at Walmart or breaking a window is really minimal violence in comparison.
A couple people throwing **** at armed cops is not serious violence.
The idea of owning property that other must rent to live is violent.
Systemic, chronic, global insecurity in the form of material poverty is violence.
Wage slavery is violence.
Gentrification is violence.
The War On Youth, i.e. the School-to-Prison pipeline, and, thus the War-on-Drugs with its attending 76% recidivism rate in the prison-industrial complex, whose populations are disproportionately black males, is violence.
The fact that people can't go to the doctor and dentist, or eat food every day is violence.
Deportations are violence.
Homophobia is violence.
The world's largest global military that vaporizes people without due process in dozens of countries violating their biophysical and national sovereignty is violence.
The United States government sanctioning the ****** of non-white, but especially Muslim bodies across the world... is violence.

So, when you condemn violence, do you mean resistance?
Because there is a whole lot of violence you should be condemning instead.

Adapted from Emilio Lacques-Zapien

My darling...
Look around, and tell me what you see?
Glittering gold?
Adoration.
A buffet of bodies?
Fake smiles, and money?
Even in the desert oasis of this world,
most things are a mirage,
meant to distract us from what’s most important.
So please,
my darling...
When you find something real,
that gives life depth,
and grabs you by the throat,
hold onto it for dear life.

If I could, I would.
I'd demolish you with the things I can do.
You remake me,
I'll remake you.
If I could, I would.
I'd obliterate all that came before;
Your past, your pain, they'd be no more.
Every brick, every beam, every shard of broken glass....
I'd renovate your body, if you would only ask...
If I could, I would.
I'd enjoy the destruction of all that came before;
Every molecule of pain would be no more.
I'd break down your walls,
assault your salty skin,
make you feel whole,
make you fragile again.
I want to smother your psyche,
make you beg for mercy.
Nothing would be same, nothing would remain.
Beneath our heat, all that was solid melts into thick air.
My mouth swallows your pain,
consumes your frame.
And there we are: destroyed.
Neither who we were, nor who we're yet becoming.
Through our destruction,  
we're remade anew.
You remake me,
I'll remake you.

Shucking oysters is a dangerous task.
Only skilled, determined hands may apply.
Why so dangerous a task you ask?
Well, let’s see?
There’s the salt, the grit, the unforgiving need...
the slips, the stabs, the you and the me.
Our boats rock along a forlorn sea.

Sitting on the dock of my mind,
the sun's rays slap me sober,
as it refuses to set for seven hundred thousand nights...

Patiently present in the moment, I am, totally attuned to the task at hand.

She's anything but simple,
this complexly succulent woman I've stumbled upon,
Unearthed I have, with my bare hands.
Rugged exterior, jagged edges,
a clear warning for all to see.
But a gorgeous glory awaits the determined, the brave, the patient,
I have faith...

I have faith in such a glory beyond legend,
in such beauty beyond reason.
Just because something feels like a miracle,
doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
For if jade kissed a pearl as it slipped into the sea,
it still wouldn't rival her beauty.

We are a meeting of minds that could unfurl for all time.
As she lines her eyes in paint,
and stains her lips like crimson art.
She's always ready for war,
launching a thousand ships in my heart.

Like the Greek Odysseus,
I've sailed upon contentment's shore,
sipping your wine and eating your grapes,
now I only want more.
Eros, the bittersweetness, is clawing at my door.
I want to live with you in the gap,
between consumption and desire,
between winter's ice and between summer's fire.

Unknowingly I have,
peeled the wall paper from her frame,
where ancient tapestries shown from beneath,
a secret no man could keep.
The scars cut deep into the fabric,
marks of carelessness in love.
The family ties that tear,
the tears of lovers once here,
now there.

Warmth gives way to wind,
and fire gives way to need.
She pulls me close,
then pushes me back,
rocking along a forlorn sea.

And like the sea,
she breathes life into me.
A great roiling tempest of the heart,
with a fury that blows reason from the mind.

Tame, tame, squeeze...    l e t   g o.
Give it...       t i m e.

Still though,
questions fray at the edges of her mind,
and yet,
with the passage of time,
the sea will settle,
the tide will recede.
I have faith in love.
And faith in me.   

Sure footed I am, even as we,
not yet a "we",
dodging rain drops,
dashing through the city,
hand-in-hand, we don't slip.
I think thoughts, but bite my lip.

And while I sip, I think;
“She's anything but simple,
this dandelion seed,
floating in the wind.
Walls up, head down,
a determined doctor,
a surgeon steeled for the journey,
thawing beneath me she is...”

“The most beautiful immigrant I've ever seen;
On the platform of her mind,
she longs for a home, leagues from her homeland,
while I scratch at the dirt of my own.
Do I belong here?
Does she? Do we?
Where is home? Security? Acceptance? Belonging?
Who knows what the futures holds?
Allahu alam, not you or me.”

Uncertain of answers,
is this a mirage or a dream?
I can’t know for sure,
So I take heart in the Unseen.

I crack the oyster open,
and swallow it inside.
I sip life's ambrosia,
and breathe in the sky.

I'll crack The Pearl of Persia,
one kiss at a time.

I will tie you up
and torture you,
in all the best ways.
It could last hours,
possibly even daze.
I will leave you dehydrated,
aching,
sticky,
and sore.
I will leave you physically unable to say you want more.
It will be too hard,
too soft,
j u s t right,
not enough,
tease tease choke bite spit gag pull              s q u e e z e.

Lie back, if you please.

To elaborate on what Chris Hedges (the liberal who loves to play radical during uprisings) wrote in the Occupied Wall Street Journal concerning the goal of the Occupy Wall Street movement: “The goal to us is very, very clear. It can be articulated in one word—REBELLION. … What the elites fail to realize is that rebellion will not stop until the corporate state is extinguished.”
To that, I say this:
If you are sick and tired of living in the land of the 'free',
in the land of plenty,
while you see injustice
and poverty
and suffering,
then stand up.
Join a local chapter of Occupy,
join any progressive group.
If you don't see these things,
PLEASE WAKE UP.
READ, look and listen,
to the world around you,
rather than a TV, an Iphone,
or some talking head.
The deep inequities in life exist for a reason.
Capitalism, that oh so familiar 'greed is good' mentality.
We have to transform it totally,
beginning with a plea for rebellion.

Pull me down.
Hold me c l o s e.
You're the one,
I want the m o s t.

Breathe in deep.
Pull your h a i r.
You wanna be here,
I wanna be t h e r e.

What's old is dust.
And today is n e w.
You remake me.
I'll remake y o u.

**** and kiss,
and tongue and *******.
This is fate,
with a little l u c k.

If corporate Dems tell me about how 'We all do better when we all do better'...
Or about how 'It's not about class, it's about coming out for Dems'...
Or about how, 'No one identifies with the working class' or 'nobody wants to identify with the working poor'...
I say to you, WE ARE THE WORKING POOR.
Look at the stains on their clothes, listen to their words, look at the rugged callous of their hands, who amongst us can last a job loss, or wage cut, or a car blow out?
None of us, cept the 1%.
We are the precariat class, the proletarian class.
I say to you, the working poor and homeless are the 'emarginati', the literal marginal ones, the ones at the edges of society.
But who, honestly, isn't at the edge???
The Democratic gubernatorial candidate turned carpet-bagging Congressional goon, Bank of America executive turned-state-CFO Alex Sink embodies the centrist-right neoliberal dogma of 'business-rules', who cares about immigrants besides those who 'clean our hotels and do our landscaping'.
Brand-imaging, quaffed corporate Dems are why the two-party system in broken.
Both parties are sell-outs to capital, and they think we don't know.
We know, and we remember.
Neoliberal capitalism of 'Washington Consensus' imposed on the rest of humanity will fall.
I just hope we wise up as a republic in the mean time.

What hides beneath my breath,
lies dormant just beneath,
vows about forever,
imprisoned behind my teeth.

A life of bread and roses,
a steady hand to weather the storm.
It's hardly an open secret,
I want you to carry my first born.

After years of trial and error,
sands pass through the hands of time.
Casting off the forlorn darkness,
one sublime kiss at a time.

I met you in the winter;
and we'll weather every season.  
I'll never let you go,
not for any reason.
Take my hand for now,
love me without reason.

Grueling days and restless nights,
are the price we have to pay.
We toil in the sun of now,
to lie in tomorrow's shade.

You're worth every hardship,
just to have you by my side.
It's hardly an open secret,
I want you as my bride.

Because you're worth every effort,
and ounce of sacrifice,
it's hardly an open secret,
I want you as my wife.

It's hardly an open secret,
I'll love you til I die.
If you ever forget the reasons,
let my poems remind you why.  

Take this ring as a token,
of the durability of love.
Say yes to my proposal,
make my heart lighter than a dove.

She said to me:
“You asked me to dream new dreams.
My sweet love, you are that dream...

Waking up to you is that dream...

Holding you from the back while you brush ur teeth is that dream

Smiling at you, and you smiling back to me is that dream.

You ******* me like you mean it is that dream.

It is a dream to be in love with you; being loved by you is that dream.

You looking at me looking at you
through the windows of our souls
is the dream I never dared to dream.”

This time is precious,
every moment infectious.
One minute in a parking lot,
parking cigarettes in the dirt,
outside a library no less.
And from one minute to the next,
shaking hands with a councilwoman.
Just her presence,
was a good omen.
This is a community meeting,
ahead of a strike,
on May 15th.

Our fight?
Our cause?
Wage parity.
The resource vitality,
of every worker,
and every family.
Every human deserves dignity.
Repeat it with rapidity.
We are all created equal.
This is a civil rights sequel.
You can't survive on $7.93
And if it were up to me,
No job would pay less than
FIFTEEN.

The rich can't inoculate,
what they didn't anticipate.
Fry cooks, cashiers, drive-thru tellers,
(these ain't no "bums" or beggars!)
They met up with activists,
and labor leaders.
They've walked off the job
and into the streets!
They've come out,
to take a stand,
to shake off their chains,
and make some demands!
$15 and a union!!!
If you haven't taken notice,
I don't what you've been doin!!!

I hope McDonald's, Wal-Mart, and retailers galore,
value the profit-producers,
running their stores.
The notion upon which,
both capitalists and socialists can agree,
is that labor produces value according to theory.

The media are watching,
in case you need reminding.
Watching you rake in BILLIONS,
while paying and STEALING,
POVERTY WAGES.
We call this condition,
hard-working ENSLAVEMENT,
with pay-as-you-go debit card "paychecks"...
And all this "part-time"
just to make sure workers are best
nickel'd and dime'd!!

But what you don't seem to understand,
is that this movement is long overdue.
Do we need a historical inflation review?
And this $10.10 business?
Please!
What is this 1993?

You can't sanitize,
Baptize,
nor televise,
this struggle.
These are a people who've had enough.
'Ya Basta!' they say! 'Enough is Enough!'
Enough struggle,
enough hustle,
Enough putting in muscle,
and your time, and blood,
and sweat and tears,
many with children,
many for years,
without a pay bump that keeps pace,
with the basic cost of living these days.

Still a minimum wage,
of only $7.93?!
I say 'Ya Busta!'
if you ask me.

This is a thoroughly post-modern phenomenon.

[Breathe, don't be nervous. It's fine. Wallah, you're not doing anything wrong.]

Digitally arranged meetings with ostensible strangers yet with more familiarity than our ancestors could imagine.
An arranged meeting,
a warm greeting,
a sensing,
a feeling.

“Are you Sami?”
“I am,” as I posture for a hug.

[She’s actually more beautiful than I expected. Her ample curls smell like conditioner and sunshine.]

“So you’re Kuwaiti?"
"Yea, I moved here when I was 18, to Kansas of all places."
"To be honest, I had to look up the emoji flag from your profile. My Muslim WhatsApp group helped me out.”
“Oh, okay. So you’re Muslim?”
“Yea, I was raised Muslim; my mom married a Kuwaiti in the 80s, blah blah blah.”
“What? Your mom lived in Kuwait?”
“Yea, kinda crazy, I know, but it’s a small world.”

[Small worlds make the gaps between souls smaller.
Who knew such a small place could leave such a big impact on so many lives?
Certainly neither of us.
Serendipity?
Allah y3alam.]  

“Why do lesbians discriminate against bisexuals? You’d think of all people, they wouldn’t be so judgmental.”
“You’d think, but you’d be wrong. It’s like we have a plague.” Her voice goes on, but my mind drifts off.

[Tortoise-shell glasses, beautiful lashes, manicured eyebrows that frame flickering dark eyes, encased in a forest of curls, legging laced thighs, oh my. ::Deepsigh. Pay attention to what she’s saying! Oh my, she’s my type. This is bad. No, no, hamdilah, this is good.]

“Do you want another round?” the bar keep’s inquiry snaps me back to reality. I interrupt to suggest a change of location. [Perhaps something less commercial, less public, less straight, more private, and more intimate.]
“It’s only a short walk.”
“Yea, let’s do it.”

[By short walk, I mean three doors down from the bar. The perks of suggesting the venue.]

“Shoes off?”
“Yea, it’s habit, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course not.”

She sits, crosses her long legs, and gives me this look. My heart flutters; I remember my manners:
“Can I make you a drink? What’s your poison? Gin or *****?”
I mix our drinks and think:
[She must like me.
This is good.
I’m glad we did this digital dance to find romance.
What a treasure, finding this post-modern habibi.
Alhamdulilah,
Lucky me.]

We are a wretched and gruesome thing.
A night of drinking and swimming and fun,
suddenly becomes tense
with the touchy mention or exchange of a few words.
Suddenly fists are flying,
thuds of body shots and the 'ughs' of an *** kicking,
float out into the night.
Like wolves frothy for a ****,
the crowd goes ape **** wild,
oafish Baboons fawning over first blood,
the male rivalry and crowd roar is overwhelming,
nauseating.
We feel small next to the vortex of the mob mentality,
turned graphic depiction of reality.
You can sit in your perch observing,
in comfort and safety, as the the ten seconds pass,
as one brute raises his fists, while the other gasps for air,
cringing on the ground.
Whoops and calls and victory chants,
high fives and chest bumps,
and I feel a lump in my throat.
I'm physically ill,
at the inhumanity, gluttony, pride, and malice
all drunkenly converging in a whirl wind **** storm of testosterone and Bud Light.
Violence, with no cause,
is just madness.

Take me to the river,
wash me clean,
wash me clean.
I want the stain of her removed,
from every scrap of everything.
Take me to the river,
wash me clean,
wash me clean.
Singe her stench from my soul,  
burn every fiber of my being.

Take me to the river,
wash me clean,
wash me clean.
I want to be free of her memory,
and the song that we'd sing.
Singing, Oh, Lord,
Grant me renewal,
give me grace.
I can still taste your love,
though now it’s a bitter taste.

In the train station of my mind,
there are moments,
doors open,
doors close.

There are cars taking ideas as passengers,
in directions multivariate,
and yet there I am.
On the platform, I wait,
Neither in motion,
nor in queue.

I am, however, thoroughly without you.

On the platform of my mind,
in the crevices of time,
I wait.

I long for a home,
merely an idea of true love's redemption,
whose direction is in question.

O how the weary traveler longs for the home,
the home that doesn't come,
for this passenger is waiting,
neither dreaming nor fully awake,
in the train station of my mind,
for an idea, in a moment that may never come.

When will you come home?
Or is my idea of home,
departed?
As you are.
As we are.

On the platform, I wait.

A serendipitous sadness...
Is there really such a thing?
The casting of doubts, the return of engagement rings.
Our hearts are broken,
Our plans undone.
Hold me tonight, just for fun.

My mind was yours
but now it's locked.
I used to care
but now I've stopped.
My heart was full
but now it's popped.
The picture was us
but now it's cropped.

Cold on this love lift,
her coldness was her last gift.
Hear this, feel this.
This everlasting summer,
this beautiful beach bliss,
this fiery kiss has gone cold.
We know it's necessary
but it's nonetheless scary,
to lose a love so intense,
so real,
without judgement or pretense.
But I sense that this is necessary,
if not temporary.
This was her last gift,
a final kiss.
Who knew it would be our last?
For how long will 'last' last?
I miss her laugh;
Our love was made to last.
I'm sure of it, aren't I? Aren't I?
A secret love that was a delicate dance around horrible circumstance;
Forbidden love that tears the heart, the mind, the world in two.
But what could we do,
but try until we simply couldn't anymore?
Our last kiss haunts me,
it taunts me...
Lips cleaned by the tears that streamed,
but what I mean
is that we had too many goodbyes to ever make it.
We didn't fake it but,
it was never enough.
Love snuffed,
drowned in distance,
choked by fear,
too much persistence,
insistence,
hesitance,
reticence,
innocence,
distance,
always too much distance,
and inexperience,
and in my experience,
there's no good way to leave.
No easy goodbye,
not when you've been this high,
on a love lift.
Snow drifts... my mind drifts.
Gentle caresses,
passionate undresses,
****** intensity,
always too much brevity.
Searching for levity,
much needed serenity.
I find gratitude in the strangest place;
it has a bitter taste:
In the coldness
of her non-existent goodbye,
lay her last gift.
The coldness of it was her last gift.
Like a bandaid pulled off with a single rip.
You once said I had a heart of gold.
Falling into the snow,
hopping off this love lift.
My gentle heart now grows cold,
wandering... adrift.
But still I want,
just one more kiss.

The sound of silence is a penetrating thing.
It rings in my ears; it hurts, and it stings.
The sound of silence is a terrible thing.
The notes of death a swan song sings.
The sound of silence is a telling thing.
It whispers, "it's over, it was only a fling."
Perhaps there's something else it means?
Can silence actually be a gift of sorts?
Her way of saying, "I care, of course."
"I care enough not to call,
not to text,"
no sounds at all.
If you love something, let it go.
It's a catchphrase proverb we all know.
We've heard it before,
and we know it makes sense.
Letting go has a sound,
the sound of silence.