the rocking chair creeks on the back porch.
she cradles The Hobbit in her lap,
sips black tea and brings the joint to her lips,
carried away in an airborne ship of smoke
to Middle-Earth, an escape
from the tedium of 9-to-5s,
consumerism and bored housewives.

the cars **** by but she can’t hear.
she slips through the fabric of time
and space to the upside down. flipped
around with another page to hang
on the precipice of bliss implicit
in every interlocking sentence.

here, words cannot hurt, only heal.
within these holy septs, sacred texts
lead us to truths beyond the veil.
she who reads
has lived a thousand lives
in a fraction of the time.

i want to dive behind her cold brew eyes
and peruse the passages of synaptic gaps,
meandering along neurological paths,
for not all who wander are lost.
the human mind is like your favorite book—
once it’s been opened,
it can never again be truly closed.

we fell like a swell of rising seas, swarming the capitol city:
D.C., a bastion of vitriol, bigotry, and inequality.
we were demonstrating in the streets when she kneeled on the concrete,
a bit of scarlet chalk treasured in the palm of her hand. all around,
people were dancing, singing, laughing. she smiled to herself and peered
over at me when she thought i wasn’t looking. a paisley red bandana hung
from her neck like some outlaw out of the wild, wild west,
challenging all authority. grim cops looked on, faces obscured
by matte-black helmets, guarding the twisted tower looming over our globe
like an ancient deity out of time and space, a leviathan effacing the world.
she etched a symbol of defiance and solidarity into the cement and, in that moment,
she embodied anarchy, the mother of order, a guiding north-star.

***

Turnover spills from the speakers. she hums along, her foot on the dashboard, tap-
tap-tapping along in-tune, attuned to the road, nose buried in an Angela y Davis book.
North Carolina interstates fly past us and i wonder absently
if the words hit home for her, too:
losing you was like cutting my fingers off.
you can catch a glimpse of grief
in her eyes if the morning light’s just right,
filtering like a double-shot of caffeine into your bloodstream
through the forest canopy flanking the highway.
you can feel the melancholic heart-ache lingering
like old wounds even time can’t seem to heal whenever she forces a smile
and pretends to be—if not happy—then at least “alright.”

***

authenticity is our only refuge against the creeping ennui,
the choking vise-grip of social hierarchy. how seldom do we rise
like lions from slumber? shake off these chains of misery.
empathy leaves us crippled constantly, wishing we were dead—
believe me, i share your burden. it’s been said that our integrity
is the very last inch of us, small and fragile. yet, within that inch,
we are free. so, braveheart, find your feet. this dying world so desperately
deserves a love as beautiful as yours, yearning to set the captives
against their masters. and when we shake the streets once again,
pirouetting beneath a banner slashed with black and red,
beloved, do not forget that you, too, are endlessly adored.

a ****** of crows gathers
over Hamburg, carrion carrying on
with business as usual.
feeding on the festered flesh
of a gentrified populace.

in private jets coughing carbon
they fly from the west on turbine wings,
engines screaming as they dive towards a nation
secured by razor-wound walls
and barb-wire borders.

they pitched a battle in Germany,
convinced that austerity
would ******* the resistance
and give justification to premeditated violence.
but the tables have turned on the thieves again.

we are the end result of your failed policies,
globalization has destroyed our homes.
if your cabal rallies like a kettle of vultures,
you will do so behind closed doors,
cowering in your fortress' halls.

you shall not pass. watch as the power shifts
like the melting gears of torched BMWs.
we will tear the vestiges of your authority down.
we will black out your surveillance cameras,
smash your windows, and block your limos. no pasaran.

flee, while you can still run. this city belongs
to the wild ones, a black bloc, thousands strong,
dancing amidst the tear gas, tossing molotovs.
marching to liberty's sturdy drum,
equal in our solidarity song.

i thought that you were
medicine when all this time
you were ******.

anxiety saps
my psyche. i'm trembling
uncontrollably.

i'll carry the scars
you gave me, wounds no one sees,
for eternity.

i thought this feeling would prove fleeting, dissipating with the rain.
but nothing's changed. there's still a void
where you used to be.
anxiety's vise-grip didn't ease one bit
when i found a new home
on the bay, so far away from the memories
that infect the streets we used to roam.
every love story eventually ends in tragedy.
entropy is our fate. but wherever i go,
i seem to be doomed to stumble
perpetually in and out
of your shadow. the rot that clings
like leprosy. inexorably, i decay.
drawn like rust right back to you.

wake up every morning with a jackhammer in my head.
think about you.
read the news.
whose kids did we bomb today?
what terror occurred half-a-world away?
or did another racist bigot stab someone in Portland?
gun shows at concert halls, schools.
protesters jailed, surveilled, beaten ******
on concrete streets we laid
after generations of genocide.
i struggle to find the poetry
in a world that's gone to ****.
wake up mourning, hoping today the world will do me in.

i have a death-grip on strife. i count my vices every night like sheep before sleep. walk alone along the razor's edge, plunging straight ahead. i admit, i'm misery embodied. but i'll be ****** before you steal my liberty.
no gods. no flags. no masters.
there is nothing and no one higher.
i open my lungs to the summer air. breathe deep. the sun is beating down. my clothes are black. i feel the beads of sweat gathering. the crickets' lyrics slip through the reeds. the pond ripples, a dragonfly alighting upon a lily. i feel the earth beneath me, spinning on its axis. i cannot see the tilt, but i can measure the skies, chart the constellations. we are spinning around a star, one of many. trillions of suns. this is real. this is true. i can prove it.
no gods. no flags. no masters.
there is nothing and no one higher.
defy. deny. concede nothing. solitary in conviction. stand strong. stay sober. die free.