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Unassuming leaf
Welcomes light, breathes energy
Wind blows, smooth blades gleam

Blue skies heat strikes green
Providing shade and sugars
For my revelry


Awed by humble tree
Wherein a branched court perches
Singing passerine
Trees are awesome, **** the system
the path to love is elsewhere
surface folds create the illusion of depth
in a fully mutable system

this is you
roving and roiling
on your open palm

an offer of lack
in lieu of fulfilment
i think we lost the world
decades ago.
a new innovation every year
a new innovation every year
a new innovation every year
a new innovation every

ive been losing my ability to talk
it began slowly
first when i learnt about marxism
the unspeakable irrationality of the market
a future automated to the point of economic crash
the mistakes at the top by those impartial actors
bailed out by the state
because **** the rest

i have lost my tongue
these words come out a stilted mess
second i learnt about feminism
a slow descent into western enlightenment humanism
more properly called white male privilege
more recently called the alt-right
displacement of all abject terror into a projective mockery
abasement of all cultural difference
outside critique folded into the term censorship
their own censorship labelled as transgression
the death of dialectical exchange

and before all that
the ecological crisis
when i was still a naive liberal doing a zoology degree
sitting in the library every evening
feeling a deepening resentment towards everything and everyone around me
catastrophic global warming
the cessation of all life
the automated slaughter of millions
rationalised through the same rhetoric as racism and sexism
more commonly called speciesism
thinking more and more that the most wretched species on the planet
was human beings

i dont know where im going with any of this
i dont know where i am
these words dont come easily anymore

the more i learn about the world
the harder it gets to say anything
because beyond outrage
there is silence
and a deepening feeling that nothing we do will change anything
that we’ve past the point of no return and are heading inexorably towards
death bigotry fascism patriarchy genocide war drone strikes corporate manslaughter **** transphobia terf ******* annihilation of the other platform capitalism self-regulating automatons caught in the iron cage of instrumental rationality all selves constructed through social media hegemony elevator pitch self-reflexive death of corporeality the transfiguration of the entire human species into scopophilic nightmare celebrities cramming their faces with photo-perfect steak dinners spouting anti-pc fascist ******* about how queers have never had it better and that blacks should just stop being born in poor socioeconomic environments and just work harder whilst juggling a part-time job and care work that this is the best economic system we've ever had as power shifts irrevocably into fewer and fewer hands total institution of society backhanded disdain towards any collective politics whilst reposting the same ******* reactionary memes everyone else in their collective (non)-identity group has shared where do we go? what’s left to reclaim to built to move towards mired in regressive politics the meandering subject of left politics trapped in the media apparatus of capital myself included too anxious too wretched mouth filled with cotton the tightening pull of knowing too much in an ever increasingly alienating academic jargon poststructuralist ******* that i love but am incapable of explaining where do i go? what am i doing? what the **** is happening?

there’s no way out of this
THE GULF WAR DID NOT |
THE GULF WAR DID NOT |
THE GULF WAR DID NOT

WHY WE OPPOSE:
Staid quanta of individuality. Phenom asks if they can go. The Big Mouth replies, babble babble. In a fit of rage, Phenom shouts, I’ve had enough of this. They wrench themselves off the dissection table, fetters flying into the air, but a sudden bout of vertigo sets in. They lie back down. The Big Mouth sticks a thermometer into their mouth and begins heating a can of corn soup.

WHY WE OPPOSE:
Professor Kippotkin takes the stage. She coughs into the mic to quiet the audience, but they are caught in sordid *******. She coughs again, managing only to project a trail of spit onto the shoulder of the nearest security guard. He turns immediately, a perfect ninety-degrees spin, automatically signalling the first in command. He has been trained since seventeen for this one task of momentous disciplinary precision. The first in command bellows, Let her speak! a phrase his colleagues repeat in serial down the chain of command.

The crowd soon catches on. An isolated few nod in consternation. Let her speak! they yell from the pits of their lungs, Let her speak!

Thank you, thank you all, Professor Karlpoppins exclaims, cheeks flush with amazement. More and more of the crowd join in. It is a rousing spectacle, a poignant display of human decency. But something is awry. The professor’s gratitude is swallowed into a cacophonous whole. Let her speak! The carnal grip of the big Other’s command unleashes the crowd’s jouissance. United in the master discourse, the crowd fragments into a bewildered totality. Let her speak! they scream at one another, arms jostling, heads tilting back, necks bared to the beating pulse of the earth-sky. LET HER SPEAK! Their combined blows begin to generate an ominous om.

Pl-please, Professor Kibbiezsche sputters, please, everyone! but the crowd have already forgotten her existence. Reams of toilet paper fly through the air. A crashing plane sounds in the distance. Crops burn.

The security team are forced to intervene. They close in from the sides, wielding riot shields and tear gas. HYPOCRITES! one of the members of the crowd screams. OPPRESSORS OF THE WORD! another follows. Footage of security guards flailing on the ground circulate on social media, tagged with the phrase WHO SPEAKS MY SPEAK?

Within twenty four hours, the whole country is ablaze with media coverage. Political scientists gather with literary scholars to speak the unspeakable into commercially-viable forms. Semiotext(e) sign a deal with Hollywood to write a docudrama about Baudrillard’s turbid *** life. Professor Kubblebutts is flown to Hawaii to give a speech on combine harvesters.

WHY WE OPPOSE:
I desire, therefore I am not. Incantation of the other spills through my greasy fingers as I fumble towards the hot sauce, dollop dollop, chicken salt strewn across the nommy wedges. That’ll be $4.50. They have already handed me the note. Our fingers touched for the briefest second, an anointment of the greasy chicken, the wedge fingers, the have a good night mister gurgle bop.

The taxi man sits outside in the cold, back heated by the friction of the smoothie machine, an indefinite spin, western civilisation’s meltdown. The turgid heat breezes past my neck and I sigh, almost in delight, but mostly out of convention and solidarity with the other workers. I hear the pitter pat of my shiftpanion as she scoops hot chips into the fresh night; it is so fresh, there is still so much night, why are you giving me $5 dollars, there is a bug on your face.

I take a break. The cool taxi man glances over just as I put my hands down my pants to shift my boxers into a more comfortable why is it always like this.

Everyone blames Foucault for destroying agency, but agency only arises in the gap between discourses, which is never a gap in power, but rather, the transversal of one power relation into the discursive matrix of another; what appears original is merely the same performance in the wrong site, that’ll be $24 for your **** and condoms.

The crumbled fish is shrinking with each passing day, little gasping body beneath the heat lamp, waffle waffle, waffle waffle, I am suffocating :)

WHY WE OPPOSE:
|||||FEeling BOLD? FeEL BOldbous ;;;; new Paracetamol Jelly and the KINK-CATS tour out the last week—
Thank you for holding. Please note this conversation may be recorded.
To continue, please state: 'my voice confirms my identity'
||"my voice confirms my identity"
and again, please state: 'my voice confirms my identity'
||"my voice confirms my identity"
Please note that this conversation is being recorded for the purposes of confirming your identity.
||"thanks"

WHY WE OPPOSE:
Slowly, slowly, Juniper sinks into the bed frame, the draughty window, the rotting sink. Hibiscus coveted for its prophetic dreams, pale steam smites nostalgia for a vision of the beyond. Streamlined entry into New World, an endless reshelving of family-value Mi Goreng, stormwater through the hollow vessels that twist beneath Juniper’s soles.

Juniper climbs the Garden steps. Pale trace of past motions set to automate at the slightest incline. The cloying rot beneath the pines pulls her closer and closer to the vital cache, the hidden excess. Another hedgehog climbs the mound; it admits its body, it expands in putrefaction.

Exiting onto the street, Juniper is greeted by a sign that reads “Caution. Night Shooting. Stay Out.”

WHY WE OPPOSE:
Steam creeps the mouth of the lid. Pallid flesh of yesterday’s body, settles the kitchen table, the hand, as motes crumple beneath gravity’s well. Mottled refuse, tied with a plastic ribbon, thrown into the street. Keys digging trenches, grandfather, the hollow behind my knee.

Last summer I waited for the rain in the dry concrete channel of the Leith. I was alone with the kayaks and the road cones and the fish, holes festering, showing their ribs in the walls of our flat, legs spread wearing high school sweaters, unable to breathe through cling wrap.

The summer before that, I watched films of myself bashing in the heads of strangers. Every night the ceiling of my mouth would transfigure into a doorway and I’d force my tongue through its serrated edges, waking with a new face. The cassettes would arrive soon after, testimonies of a brute physicality I could not remember enacting.

Earth grins, death strides. Hydraulic incisors pry the dead awake. At the smallest unit of life: phones, condoms, water bottles.
a piece i wrote for a zine

a piece
tangled
upturned
headed towards demise

ouroboros in its last desperate gasp

kingbabel.com/2018/07/09/faff0-plastic-death/

collab with hellopoetry.com/abloobloobloo/
I will not stand by while abuse happens
six months of cyclical hell
the push and pull of your desire
insatiate

this issue has never been singular
confined to some imaginary private space
in the public view of us all
using your circumstances to justify
the victimisation of another
to the point of collapse

the coloniser builds a fort
because they're afraid
of their own violent mirror-image
projected into the landscape

do you recognise
yours?
i'd always thought playing the victim was a term the right used to discredit survivors of ****, but it actually arose out of victim narratives of abusive relationships, where the abuser would posit themselves as the real victim, even as they persecuted the other with emotional blackmail, gaslighting and violence.

this all makes me ******* sick.
just apart
radiant
refusing to exist

no media
no touch

erring the side
catching the wreck
this double standard won’t survive
so what’s the point?

the closest cliff is a ride away
how dare you theorise depression as a form of resistance
too worthless to leave the house, too anxious to engage with lecturers, too tired to do assignments -- if this is resistance to neoliberalism then id rather ******* die
like smoke
you drift apart

its a sad old cliche
your braided hair
lost
in the glare of sunlight
turned
to obliterate

i hadnt looked in years
i hadnt looked in years
but there you were
caught in my mind
loved without remorse
or so i wished.
out of arms
out of lungs
out of head
it’s an effort to be dragged
catch beneath the lock
where i tore my lid three years ago
each descent returning
spit from the cavernous body of marx

an empire of glass
the wretched of centre city
mop the open wound of 24/7 affairs
*** and grease stained upholstery
apologising for everyone else's mess

it’s blasé-faire
it’s pro-choice
corporate megaphone through the airwaves
distilled into the perfect idiot subject
enjoy life
enjoy life
enjoy life
enjoy life
enjoy life :)
the happiness industry would have you believe that all the ills of the world will be solved through positive thinking :))
sometimes a pit
gazing inchoate
smiling past it all

inès passes the mirror
a smouldering black shape

today i looked at no one

tomorrow i’ll arrive.
che vuoi?
nothing
nothing
nothing
nothing
nothing

but people keep returning i look away frigid frightened caught in an inescapable duration
people i knew or know or want to know
shrinking in the corner like bellows lungs the sounds of buildings collapsing in reverse
one day it'll be better worse you smell like cigarettes you smell like process irrevocable.
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