always we are stuck to situations
where what we do can not be good
no matter how good we are at it.
this may be capitalism, or consciousness.
maybe we can transcend; i'm trying sympathy
for mysticisms of the individual like love:
that we as protuberances of society
can change ourselves & approach it
as if from the outside. i like the problems
of the individual: better to feel
external stress or internal stress?
fear or guilt? i do think we need
some stress. i believe very little in
human essence, but worry sounds as
essential as love. worry sounds like
a lot of things these days, or in them.
when last night cops claimed my street
in their dozens for ten hours to siege
a neighbour in his bathroom, using a
fancy rake to break his windows
from the floor above, tearing down
his hung giants jersey until
it fell two stories like a flag rippling
through spotlights to the sidewalk,
and hesitantly they sent a drone in
through the twisted frame, worry
in its whine and its twitchy piloting.
amazing how swiftly infrastructure
becomes nonchalant ruin. when he
leaves the bathroom shouting after
nine hours of silence they feel the
heat, try to shout him down, threaten
to arrest two Black neighbours for
standing back of them where
the armored humvee hatch shipped
back from afghanistan can't shield,
threatening me as an afterthought
from a noble urge to seem even-handed,
i believe they are doing their best
playing as well they can an evil hand
they dealt themselves. the last good
was possible was likely months ago;
telling his mother to text a search warrant
then occupying a city street is just
overtime for at least 5% of the OPD.
in a protrusion of fear the police
chose to occupy, evacuate, siege until
he embarassed them in street debate
and the rising line of their annoyance
met the falling line of their perception
that he would shoot, or even had a gun.
gunless they treated him as just a body
to be bound and moved. no shots were fired,
only two cops ignored bystander's rights;
and in their heavy boots I might too
have devolved to shouting in the street
with a hand soothing on my automatic rifle.
this is to me the definition of the social,
the systemic, that which evades the
individual while forming it. if a place pays
and lauds police for war, they live in war,
they hear the worry of war in our streets,
eyes blossoming with targets, they draw
battle lines and conscript us. such terrible
momentum is what i worry most about
in the individual. it is both internal and
external to us; chained to it, we are
made of chains that learned to doubt
themselves, to worry together,
to love. i yearn for transcendence;
we/i am the thing that is stuck
but also we are the stickiness itself.
how can there be so much power
and yet we feel so powerless?