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Sam Bowden Dec 2014
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
I really wanna write pretty ****
Like about birds singing at night
or the tired steps of the one Mexican maid
as she passes by my house before and after work

I want to write pretty ****
About my mother’s resilience
Her words of encouragement
And the sound of defeat in her “mijo no tengo ni pa’ la leche”

I want to write pretty ****, academic ****, deep ****,
About beautiful man of color
Trying to be anything but black or brown
Girlfriends claiming their white side
The silencing of accented voices
I am dying to write pretty ****

I want to write about her big *** eyelashes
And her fierce makeup
And how her face was flawless when they found her laying there
In a poodle of blood
Why would anyone **** someone so pretty?
It’s as if they hated pretty ****
Like the color of brown and black skin
And green trees and ****
Why do they like to **** pretty ****?
Like spirituality and native languages?
And they give nobel peace prizes to ****** up institutions with ****** up policies that push people to desperation, bomb them, starve them, and at the end blame them,
They like to blame pretty **** too

I want to write pretty ****
Like waking up to the bright sun
And driving by the day laborers at home depot
Some of them look so hopeful, and some of them so defeated
Some of them sleep beneath the little tree on the parking lot
Why do you illegalize pretty people?

Ain’t freedom pretty and injustice ugly?
Then why don’t we write about justice and ****
About the caribou not having to be fenced
And native land returned to indigenous peoples

Why don’t we claim our inner beauty
And recycle all them ****** up magazines filled with cropped bodies treated as money, souless bodies,
The fashion industry is ugly

And why don’t obama talk about pretty ****
Like reparations and wealth redistribution
And getting rid of Deportations, Deportations that’s some ugly ****
tread May 2011
Osama bin Laden is dead.
That pretty much sums it up right there- the tag-line to the War on Terror we've all been waiting for;
The adherent doctrine dealt out like a decoration to add decor to the death and destruction distributed so freely like health care should be,
But isn't because Fox News and the Tea Party see it differently;
"The only thing that should be free is the freedom to spread freedom against the wishes of the oppressed by utilizing force of arms to instill upon them a will to fight what we see as their evil sheikdoms,"
Stage 1 in a dramatic ensemble of violence all directed at the elimination of human toil in pursuit of the spoils of unjust construction,
A naive assumption based on silly presumptions against Islam in conjunction to the real world.

Osama bin Laden is dead.
A euphorically jubilant crowd applauds outside the steps of the White House,
And I listen with incrementation as the news station sponsors discrimination to add flames to the hate machine,
And I wonder;
Can we not just cut the cake? Clean the slate of the human race just to cut to the chase and reach the release we sought in world peace in the first place?
Probably not, as it is our woes that have brought men from silver to gold, modest to bold, caring to cold, and 'on sale' to 'sold' in this system.

And I can't accept that.

It would be a different case if my sad face brought a poor man back to first base in terms of sustaining the ability to remain within the mile-high club that is the human race,
Or if my woes brought all poverty stricken panic from financial rags, to spiritual riches,
Instead of all this **** where people are paid to dig ditches just so, in turn, they begin to build bridges over said ditches simply to stimulate an abstract mathematical construct a few inches further from rock bottom.

Osama bin Laden is dead.
For the past ten years, what ground did he tread?
Not a lot; at least in comparison to his pursuers who tread streets full of hot lead and ****** head's, each still scarred with a lingering dread left unsaid;
And so vivid, is the anger, so vivid the hate and horrors of war, to the point that one is beyond asking 'what is this all for?' and simply hits the floor as rockets **** by like angry boars, and bullets shatter walls and **** at a pace that a pill couldn't heal your soon to be charred corpse,
And life looses all meaning;
War is no longer a late-night TV show screening, it's men and women screaming with their guts spilled and steaming,
And the tears don't suffice, as everything cuts deep like a knife to symbolize this endless strife,
The trial and tribulation.

But, don't fool yourself.
Osama bin Laden is dead, he was shot in the head, now all the men and women can go back home to their countries and back to their own beds,
To night terrors instead, as they realize their sanity is caught on a thread,

But the truth still remains quite complacent;
As it is the truth that is adjacent to the lies of news stations and corporations looking to make a dime off the fall of a nation,
All caught in a frenzied impatience at how long the castration of the Haitians is taking to make a dollar towards their next Palm Springs vacation,
And all the concentration, under-the-radar conversations or over-the-top public declarations at anti-capitalist demonstrations, whether in New York City or the Appalachians,
Goes unheeded amidst Wal-Mart's new decorations, or the Palestinian deportations, or Quaran desecration's carried out by ignorant delegations filled with a fundamentalist generation of observations,
So we're blind.

Amidst all this truth, we are blind.
And to this day, my head still sways at how insane we make this world with our memes and the capacity of our brains that go unharnessed in our head,
But none of this really matters, does it?
Because Obama said Osama is finally dead.
The Jolteon Dec 2016
Under the watch of a
Democrat
We see water canons
Deportations
And drone attacks

Hand the ball back to
Republican
Corporate players
Take a tighter grip
Americans panic

The tryanny
Of false prophets
Bleeds the imperialist nation
Dry
A call to the people
Rise up or die
George A Kary May 2021
My city on the sea                                 
Falling from the cliff
Crumbling from the fall
Of a non-existent cliff
      just analogy
Creating a scene
      of constant chaos
Leaving a women
      walk the streets
Making the whole city
As herself
A *******
Abused and dissected
Pulled apart by color
Then manipulated
        by some
Creating a child by
      lust of other people
Bamboozling with presentations
Watched by lawyers                                
Given and controlled
     by a narrative of sectionality
Hidden in a Trojan Horse
Dividing to conquer
Leaving the public  
        in a  blinded desperation
Letting politicians
Rubber stamp the desires
       of bloodsuckers
Branded in stone
To let the child grow
      into refined women
Well spoken
Strong and in command
Leaving the weak and poor
In a corner
      with the overtaxed and extorted
Only to leave
To let in the new
She continues to move forward
        with her deportations
Picking from all
Excluding others
Creating a new diversity
To create new wealth
Only  to be left
as her mother
             the *******        
Just to change the face
of a entire city
Unrecognizable to the deported
who carry the infection
Incurable from the city’s
distant past
Watching Dune again
Life among the stars
Still in search of love
This love that we call ours

Trump will probably win
The American Abyss
Mass deportations
******* times like this

Tucson, Arizona
Is Alex still my friend?
Mr. Kevin Blazona
Sacramento mend

There's no long term hope
But there is short term love
Silence in the Night
Exoplanets up above

                   Water!

— The End —