writings from two friends during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. This text is available in is original format here
shit’s surreal
We slept
beside
something
wooly
and slain
every
night
Petting our
anguish closed
Eking through
each day
The lifeless doors
crisis, a beautiful beginning
Shit is surreal.The jig is up, and the façade deteriorating. Crazy time to be alive to witness the end of the United States as we know it. Everything is being called into question. Including things alot of folks take as a given like work.
The restaurant industry is all but paralyzed. Some U.S. states are even releasing prisoners from jail. All schools and universities are closed and students sent home. 6 counties in the Bay area are all under a ”shut in place” order, in which no one can leave their homes but to do essential things like going to get food.
Even in the midst of a global coronavirus outbreak, some crazy shit is in store for humanity. I hope we can make of this crisis into a beautiful beginning to a different world.
The Earth is revolting against this civilization. It’s best to the get out of the way and rejoin with our blue marble in the dark. Our home no matter where we are.
want a family
I went by the lake this evening.
Never seen the lake frozen before.
Felt kinda eerie looking at it. Listening to the cars in the back and the sound of the water. The
darkness of the sky and midst. My anxieties and discomfort in my chest- wondering what to do, and thinking about how for all my teenage years I tried to be a revolutionary but now as a grown man,
I find myself with no skills or formal education.
Having to steal to eat,
and ask strangers to tap me through the train gate because I have no money.
I want to live better, and have a family, a community.
water will outlive the state
How could
family
be a mirage,
more than
this
crystal garden?
A chimera,
a stillness
made of
words
In my arms is gathered
all the space
of that which
I’ve set
free
Why can’t we
print money
if we need
foodor be
celebrated
for
all we
abort
or subvert
Water
surviving
In life,
all things
seem to
take turns
chewing
It is special
to be dust
if you
have
love
let’s make with our lives
Spent most of the morning and noon dealing with the government trying to reapply for my food stamps. I waited for 3 hours, for them to tell me more or less they couldn’t help me. That they could only give me $35 worth of food stamps. I was so upset, but what else should I expect from a system that’s built on making us all miserable, while they extract from our souls all that is best in human beings.
To love, to share,to be together to make with our lives what we desire. I refuse to allow the state to kill my spirit. I will overcome, I will figure out a way.
warm in the friction
One hand washes
The other dances
The world is
a kernel
of wax,
warming
in the friction
between
Is there any future
to be had
in gravity’s cusp
That is why I
float
why I’m
unseated like a spore
onto
the wind
The wind
eroding the skin
Abrasions
Paths
that reify
the state
The sun-
rise
like me
needs a bath
Soap
in one hand
The other unfolding
Bubbles
Chicago
In all their
sculptural
Giving
One hand
feeding
whatever ends the end brings
Looks like I’m going back
to Chicago for a while.
Staying with ****** for a
month until I land a job.
It’s hard for me not to
think of the future
because I know nobody has
one, but in the ever unfolding of the present moment.
When the pressure of my current circumstances
out of desperation pushes me to look for a
better future, when there is none...
my only wager is to try to develop something
good right now. Something that can endure,
whatever ends the end of the world will bring.
in the absentee future, i find us
-------------------------This zine was made bytwo friends during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemicWe acknowledge and live with the knowledge and awarenessthat the United States is a lie, an ongoing Imperialoccupation of indigenous territories and forms of life.If anything, the coronavirus has taught us Babylon is notimmune to catastrophe. Babylon is the catastrophe, and weare the conspiracy. The lands of Washington D.C. prior toEuropean colonization in the early 17 th century were hometo various tribes of the Algonquin-speaking Piscatawaypeople (also known as the Conoy). They inhabited thelands around the Potomac River. Chicago is a part of thePotawatomi peoples territory.