the cost to live
lies in the basic necessities
of lack thereof
an eye for a kilo of beef
an arm for a bag of rice
dinner served
with the aftertaste of
slavery and genocide

the cost to live
is buried within values
numbers inflating
every second
every month
every year
every life time lived,
a reflection of a system
staring back at its own demise

there is a cost to live,
our people bear the brunt
of imperialist
spears and drills,
armed to their teeth
with bullets and greed

there is a cost to live
in a city built
on the graves of martyred children,
and of women,
of men; all done
at the behest of blinding thrones
and to feed the gluttonous beast named
overconsumption

we know the cost to live,
thus we bring forth
the payment it deserves
marching in the thousands,
and in the millions,
armed with knowledge
of the lands that nurtured our souls,
of the aspirations of the people
who commend
the cost to struggle
in order to make anew
the cost to living
a dignified liberation

Plump ripe fruit
taken from the vine with a bit of guilt
is it better to turn her into pie
or let it rot and wilt?
I am unnaturally and unnecessarily human
made of sugar and spice
surely this berry would be of more use
fallen on the floor with the bugs and the mice.

Many conspiracy theories get the connections and convolutions right. What they get wrong is the distracting end game, when the truth's so clear. Just look at the results. The rich and powerful always escape culpability, escape punishment. If the evidence proves too blatant, creating nets of legal and PR complexities keep the farce of "justice for all," while maintaining their Old World nobility.

Victorian inbreds and mobster charlatans, cutting corners and destroying civic morals, just to grab up more Earth. Soon their cheapness will became ubiquitous. They'll all end up in imploding pleasure submarines, dining on deadly raw foie gras, or barreling off a crumbling bridge in a driverless car.

How does capitalism deeply impact my life?

I want to make music so bad, but I procrastinate with stupid ****.
I clean as if people could come over anytime and judge me superficially. I often go out and shop for things I futilely hope will organize me enough to make cleaning faster. I shop for obscure musical instruments and gear to feel like it'll make making music easier.

In capitalism, owning the machinery is more valuable than doing the work. We ingrain that in our soul, more and more. Negative liberty was always valuable, but when you had less you used to find others to help turn that liberty positive.  

I have a guitar, bass, and drums, but no band. Self-alienation at this point. All my friends play, but don't want to make it a thing.


Our leaders are just hype men and chaos actors to keep the mystery going. "Capitalism may be cruel, but it's the best system we got."

"Capitalism just means people have the right to go into business for themselves." No the owners are subservient to something greater too. They serve capital, they serve the absolution of all. Your automatic answer is "it wasn't my fault." It was incorporated, depersonalized.

So many dead and broken people. So much waste. Digging up so much petroleum, the plastic's in our veins. "It's no one's fault." If by some astronomical chance a concerned public win a Kafkaesque trial, all that's lost is money. No one goes to jail or suffers, if you own enough stuff.

But there's the pickle. "The things you own start to own you," of course, but what's much worse is the Nothing they serve needs to grow, until there's no humanity left. Becoming voids who only seek more efficient ways to delete.

You break your back
To plow fertile their
Squalid earth.

You sweat
under the wailing sun,
Beneath their barbed wire
Whips.

You give your flesh
To satiate their hunger.

And what do you get in return?

A place for your head.

The chopping block.

A resonant gratitude streams through my veins,
Consecrated to my middle school heroines, deflecting
The whispers of shame.
But they taught me that I do not have the luxury of shame;
I have a voice, and I must amplify it––that’s what my mother said.

Elles m’ont protégée, blossoming my oneness.
I am here now because of them, I harness their divine feminine
Strength.

Standing on the bones of my aunties, their anguish travels up,
Their histories following suit.
Beneath my feet, to my knuckles; charging my inner being
My spine is rigid, fortified with the duty––
To liberate, to reform, and to love.
“But my love,” she tells me earnestly, “this love, has been assumed,
Taken for granted, blended into the background of the White man’s portrait.”

My dun skin lives in the ambiguity of praise and prejudice,
And my sisters are dead. Exploited, first––then dead.
As were my mother’s grandmothers, when the Britons drew the line.
The assembly line, however, was an American invention––
Where the American Dream came to fruition. Commodified neatly,
‘Cheaply’ produced, and easy to swallow: fine [Black*] American craftmanship!

Her tomb
Stone, will be mined by her brothers.
He is unearthing the buried history, but forced to push coal into the fire,
Cremating the legacies of his own kin.

“So what are you going to say at my funeral now that you’ve killed me?”
Her lasts words, found amongst the ashes.

All talk no action
Accountability
not even a fraction
Surmount humility
Profound inaction
Abound rigidity
Tall walk short stature
The American way
Work force pays for the
CEOs big payday
Do as I say
Not do as I do
Under the guise of
"we want to improve"
It's so easy to see
their ego's fragility
with the words they use