The New Jim Crow

Briefing

1. Written by Michelle Alexander, JD
2. Jim Crow Segregation Laws existed in the USA from 1870 to 1965
3. Wide ranging, state level statues that legalized racial Aparthied in America
4. Apartheid is a Dutch word which means “Aparthood”
5. Apartheid (/əˈpɑːrt(h)aɪt/, especially South African English: /əˈpɑːrt(h)eɪt/, Afrikaans: [aˈpartɦɛit]; transl. ”separateness”, lit. “aparthood”) was a system of institutionalized racial oppression that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 until the early 1990s.
6. This system denied non-white South Africans basic human rights, such as the right to vote. Apartheid was characterized by an authoritarian political culture based on baasskap (boss-hood or boss-ship), which ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the nation’s minority white population. According to this system of social stratification, white citizens had the highest status, followed by Indians and Coloureds, then black Africans. The economic legacy and social effects of apartheid continue to the present day.
7. Broadly speaking, apartheid was delineated into petty apartheid, which entailed the segregation of public facilities and social events, and grand apartheid, which dictated housing and employment opportunities by race. The first apartheid law was the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, 1949, followed closely by the Immorality Amendment Act of 1950, which made it illegal for most South African citizens to marry or pursue sexual relationships across racial lines.
8. The Population Registration Act, 1950 classified all South Africans into one of four racial groups based on appearance, known ancestry, socioeconomic status, and cultural lifestyle: “Black”, “White”, “Coloured”, and “Indian”, the last two of which included several sub-classifications. Places of residence were determined by racial classification.
9. Between 1960 and 1983, 3.5 million black Africans were removed from their homes and forced into segregated neighbourhoods as a result of apartheid legislation, in some of the largest mass evictions in modern history. Most of these targeted removals were intended to restrict the black population to ten designated “tribal homelands”, also known as bantustans, four of which became nominally independent states. The government announced that relocated persons would lose their South African citizenship as they were absorbed into the bantustans.
10. Apartheid sparked significant international and domestic opposition, resulting in some of the most influential global social movements of the 20th century. It was the target of frequent condemnation in the United Nations and brought about extensive arms and trade embargoes on South Africa. During the 1970s and 1980s, internal resistance to apartheid became increasingly militant, prompting brutal crackdowns by the National Party government and protracted sectarian violence that left thousands dead or in detention. Some reforms of the apartheid system were undertaken, including allowing for Indian and Coloured political representation in parliament, but these measures failed to appease most activist groups.
11. Between 1987 and 1993, the National Party entered into bilateral negotiations with the African National Congress (ANC), the leading anti-apartheid political movement, for ending segregation and introducing majority rule. In 1990, prominent ANC figures such as Nelson Mandela were released from prison. Apartheid legislation was repealed on 17 June 1991, leading to multiracial elections in April 1994.
12.  Jim Crow Segregation was the American version of Aparthied
13. “Separate and unequal” services on racial lines to maldevelope an underclass for cheap undesirable labor.
14. “The War on Drugs” was a legal framework to restore JIM CROW ERA Apartheid in the USA. It’s basic policies continue to this very day
16. Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion is a 1998 book by journalist Gary Webb. The book is based on “Dark Alliance”, Webb’s three-part investigative series published in the San Jose Mercury News in August 1996. The original series claimed that, in order to help raise funds for efforts against the Nicaraguan Sandinista government, the CIA supported cocaine trafficking into the US by top members of Nicaraguan Contra Rebel organizations and allowed the subsequent crack epidemic to spread in Los Angeles. The book expands on the series and recounts media reaction to Webb’s original newspaper exposé.
17. In the USA Whites make up around 59.1% of the population, Black people make up around 12.6% of the population and Latino/Hispanicss around 18.3%.
18. A new mode of racism served to imprison approximately 1 in 8 African American men.
19.  “Law and Order Politics” being used for mass incarceration of people of color
20. Stunningly comprehensive well disguised plan to reinstate racial caste system.
21. Affecting employment, housing, education, public benefits, voting rights and jury duty
22. 1982 Reagan Administration accelerated all of these trends
23. In 1986 a major Anti-Drug Act took effect concentrating militarized policing on the inner city.
24. Crack cocaine was introduced by the Italian Mafia and CIA into the Black ghettos in the 1980’s amounting to a planned black genocide.
25. 1998 the CIA acknowledged its IRAN-CONTRA Affair in Nicaragua right wing paramilitaries that were smuggling crack/coke into USA and distributing to fund anti-communist movements in central America.
26. Prosecution however only focused on Crack not cocaine by a ratio of 100:1. 
27. The prison population exploded during the War on Drugs from 300,000 to over 2 million. Blacks were 40% of that population.
28. Once released they became a permanent under-class
29. Another book by John Pfaff: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration
30. The Prison population is mostly privatized an industry that brings in $81 billion annually 
31. 1 in 51 Americans is or has been in Prison
32. Recidivism Rates are high; within 3 years 67.8% are rearrested and go back inside, after 5 years the rate is 76.6%
33. Whites are 60% of population; only 39% of prison population
34. Hispanics are 18% of population; 19% of prison population
35. Blacks are 12% 0f population; 40% of prison population
36. In 2016 90% are in State prisons and 10% Federal
37. The Privatized Prison system is a huge money maker called “The Prison Industrial Complex”
38. 11% of Prisons are privatized
39. Major investors or utilizers of cheap prison labor include Wells Fargo, BoA, Fidelity Group, GE and Vanguard Group, TWA, Macy’s, Chevron, Victoria’s Secret, Wal-mart, Target, IBM, ATT, Starbucks and Nike.
40. SUCH AS GEOGROUP and CORECIVIC, publicly traded firms
41. This is tied with racially motivated policing/ sentencing
42. All American Prisons are “cruel and unusual punishment”
43. They break up families, socialize brutal criminal behavior and don’t stop either drugs or crime from occurring. Once you lose your vote, you can’t get good jobs and can be used as long term cheap labor.
44. USA has more people in prison than any other nation
45. Wages in prisons are $0.12 to $0.40 cents per hour
46. When people get out they return to RED-LINED Ghettos, with bad schools, bad hospitals, and bad infrastructure in undesirable parts of the town.
47.  Poor housing stock, inadequate childcare, bad healthcare access, bad schools, higher crime as a result and militarized policing then give two options: the military or cheap labor or crime.
48. Ultimately this creates a legalized negative feedback loop that underdeveloped black American, reinstitute Jim Crow Era facts on the ground, disguised as Law and Order. 

57-1000# 

Спой мне

Setting a Red and Gold Standard for Something New

Canta para mi:

“You don’t know me well for nothing,

         There’s risk in everything we do.”

“If words have any worthy-worth,

      Then they remain small gifts until acted upon.”

“True.” (Cierto)

The urge to woo? Feelings are held when the other is gone.

Is; the urge to risk. In the shadows,

 things we might wager 

The things we might be and the things we might do! 

Every man or woman takes their own hill, 

   or makes their own hell.

           But: Heaven isn’t real, it just swells, something preachers sell, too long, too well.

             To justify the listless always working life, no sky pie, 

no one ever comes back, why?

   The dead, they gasp- the dead they all die.

They say Black don’t crack, but really: they all crack.

          The living, 

Are all dreamers, to any vain hope we grasp.

            Even when the hope is fully gone.

(cuando el trabajo se ensucia demasiado)

    Even when the work gets too dirty!

      We passed over each other, once, 

Past midnight thirty, in Lapland or that other temple of Americana squalor?

           In Arabian salsa nights, in roughly taken masquerades or sipping Bulgarian soda, in Ponce?

      You and I met our eyes, 

And I had nothing to try, or to sell or to buy and you had nothing to sell.

    At least not that day, for a drink we knew nothing, 

Nothing that ends well.

“Talk sweetly to me,” 

 (ella dijo)

“I think they just need a bribe, excuse me, an “expediting fee”.

Canta para mi:

 Oy the frost, the frost!

       Please don’t kill my petrol-bound tin horse.

Oy the frost, the evil vile northern frost!

Don’t let a bold Bronx knife take my thankless life,

       My wife is a beauty. 

A green-eyed something cutie, 

      but she is also a jealous wife.

“Am I right?”

You can’t fuck me at knifepoint tonight.

Out of the plane that I jumped?

The white bike she rode!

Could I just drop everything I’m doing right now before we implode!
“Well, count all the fucks you’re giving out tonight,

Do you think you can carry or swallow my load?” 

The backboards slam only in indiscrete places.

Trousers left on the road,

And I’ll just tell you I’m simply captivated,

By the luscious, by the tempt, by the temperature, 

but:

Frustrated by the code.

   The mask on my face protects me- not from you,

But from invisible things, like breathing. 

       Better to die of a bullet then. From a have to a have not,

A blood clot? 

When- “What proof is there-it was really a blood clot!” 

If you aren’t coming to the inner-Party, have no after-thought!

No pants down then, no hanky panky, 

no get your red robe bundle bought, 

           Then in that case: 

Lust is just lust bought,

I’ll make my leaving, 

I could work for you on a weekend, but the palace had better be swanky.

      To leave your winter chest, summer heaving, 

A general frost is dragging us into its low orbit, 

Always a rapture of death, or dying and or deception, and or deceiving.

      The dead souls must speak! 

They hear things,

            When you come-on-coming; 

Left and came again, only the seeing is worth believing!

              I saw you and in true lust I wept.

The life I lead is portable,

         Worth only as much as the secrets we gave, 

And the whispers we keep on believing. 

      The life of night is the life of a slave.

There is still some kind of vile hunger,

There is a watching, which way went smoke,

There was a bag of money, 

A blue passbook out, a black card.

The things it could buy, a black joke.

  Glorious options, good life, white skin suits,  

        There was gunpowder cut with coke.

          Life is beautifully written, but we lost somehow the portfolio; the prose-like words. 

   It all became a rough fuck. 

A Kurt joke. A morale dismember,

      If I ever knew you, 

In the naked biblical sense,

Trust me I’d fuck-king remember.

The shape of things is suspect,

       The demiurge, the prospect.

The unmitigated worth of identity, little to none.

      I take off my something,

I take off my hat in requiem.

     I take off my hat in respect.

#123

Cordillera de los Andes

What we do for work,

    is between the night and G-d. 

      What’s a jackknife to a swan? What’s a Spanish word for more hard kisses, for the subtle “wink and nod”?

What’s the answer to a question that is expressed in foreign song? 

      You’re an accommodating woman, so I know for now you’ll play along.

         You’re more than a mouthful. 

  I Could take full bait and talk about your name and place for hours,

        You work the night and the night has not one fuxk of pity for the people it devours.

        One Time when they played Opera, I fantasized about your body pressed against me in a shower.

You are something-someone all desire 

               like an exotic princess

    locked up in a tower, when I close my eyes I see gunfire!

            I see flame and battle- I breathe smoke and every day I build rebellion with the words and stack of deeds I make conspire.

But I am not such a mad man zealot,

     Instead I am another man behind the wire.

You say you’re from the Mountain?

      I reply in Old Castilian, “But I’m a man that walks on fire!”

Your eyes speak one thousand years of beauty, your smile in flames all man’s desire.

Can you undress me, 

      and let me eat you like a mango, like a rose like an ancient mountain flower.

The minutes go by, but I like the tension, 

of Russian roulette on the fly,

      when there is a lot of money on the table and 2 rounds in the chamber!

And not one person on the deck is today afraid to die. 

I saw you, the so-called old fashioned way, a passion play,

 a lasting lock of lips, a both hands on your hips, 

a need to know you, in the right way.

For the weapons on my table!

        for the steel hand on my chest, 

for the unseen G-d and angels, 

      The rebels and “the best”,

the black boxes and the leather straps of prophecy, to bind me, in the last test?

       FOR JUST one more night with you, and only you beside, 

        That’s what they call a true temptation!

“What’s a little more art before the coming winds of revolution, I confide.

          See me inside or outside, 

End the night life, take a long walk with me, not a lap ride. 

    Your bright brown eyes entrap me, your curves and lips enthrall,

         Tell me secrets, tell me screams of passion, the winner can take all.

Chapter (5) Five

 “I found myself as a young man in Diyarbakir City, the place we long call ‘Ahmed’, the future capital of all Kurdistan.” The black walled citadel of Bakur. The proud capital city of a nation that doesn’t exist, yet.”

Recounts Heval Armraz, Comrade Moving Target.

A poetic if not fully epic place. An ancient citadel of giant black stone walls and total martial law. A town of prisons, stories, heroes and valiance in the epoch of the Kurdish people. Little wine bars, a thriving literary scene. It cannot decide whether to be eastern or western, Turkish or Kurdish. The epicenter of a great revolt, or the dystopian mockery of the full blown repression of a colonizing power forcing a boot heel on our neck.  As Kurdistan is a powerful and long repressed enduring idea, that idea is becoming a reality on the barricades here and in a long running fight in the mountains. An imagined community of over forty million souls who are wrongfully, shamefully divided between the imposed nation states of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran all things have two names, all things are both real and imposed upon us. As if to be a Kurd requires an act of insanity, and an act of double thinking. A persistent zealous fight to make the world acknowledge our rights and identity. To admit we have a right to survive as a nation beset with enemies on all sides.  

Following the Turkish military coup of 1980, the Kurdish language was prohibited in public and private life. The prison of Diyarbakir filled up and the endless wails of rape and torture propelled the movement to full mobilization and to take up arms again.

 Diyarbakir, which in my people’s tradition is also called “Ahmed”, has now swollen to nearly 4 million people since the eradication and ethnic cleansing of over 5,000 Kurdish villages in the great ranges of mountains to the east. The primary battlegrounds between the Party and the Turkish State. Growing up there, there was of course no Kurdish allowed in school, no Kurdish books or music except deeply underground. Were it within the Turkish State’s power, we would not even have Kurdish names! We would admit to being backwards people of “Mountain Turks”. I was born in the year of the largest, latest and greatest uprising. And although since the days of the Medes there have been  “one thousand sighs and one thousand failed revolts” ‘, this uprising was to be completely different.

 In 1984 Abdullah Ocalan and the Kurdistan Workers Party simultaneously attacked three Turkish army posts and police stations in Bakur and announced the beginning of the revolution. For the next thirty years, almost without pause the P.K.K. and it’s armed guerrillas would battle the Turkish military across Bakur, the name we call the Turkish occupied zone of Kurdistan which means “the North”. Over 50,000 would die, mostly Kurds actually. The Turks would engage in vast acts of scorched earth barbarism and we in the Party would eventually turn to outright terror. In the end, the majority of the deaths were Kurdish civilians. In the end the only liberated ground was a handful of villages deep in the mountains of North Iraq, the Qandil.

Now, ‘Heval Amraz’ is of course not my original name. It is the name given to me by the guerrillas of the P.K.K. when I joined the Party. By that time we were fully surrounded in Qandil being attacked on all sides and death seemed certain. Total defeat as well. Our great leader had been kidnapped in Kenya. Major leaders of the movement including the brother of Abdullah Ocalan, Osman, had completely betrayed us. Our own Iraqi Kurdish brothers in the K.D.P. and P.U.K.-Peshmerga were collaborating with Turkey and America to annihilate us.

How do I tell you my story? What does it really matter? How does this even begin or end for an outsider. For people who do not even know where Kurdistan begins or ends, or even care. As Turkey is a N.A.T.O. ally, and no matter what it says or does will remain a beneficiary of great power largesse.

“I cannot tell you my real name of course. I cannot speak for the Party, nor can I fully disclose the deepness of my hope and my hate to a stranger. I can only speak to a feeling shared on differing levels by thirty to forty million Kurds. ” 

I will try to say something for the benefit of doubt, that non-Kurds could care about us so much that they would come to our land by the hundreds. To fight and die alongside us not simply fighting in resistance to Islamic radicalism, genocide and repression, but also because they grasp the larger idea. The total and utter radicalism and implications of Abdullah Ocalan’s vision. The survival of the revolution rests not in securing a Kurdish State, but instead to export these ideas abroad. To make the blood of the martyrs raise the flood waters of all mankind and provide a blueprint for liberation.

Of course we began as communists, we began admiring the Cubans and it was the Russians and Palestinians that first trained armed resistance in the early days in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. But we are not Communists or Nationalists anymore. Our thinking on the subject of liberation has evolved. The Cuban connection and the Palestinians connection are very real and enduring parts of the story.

But, when we all almost died on the mountain top, surrounded and out gunned in 2000 there were no Cubans, or Russians or Palestinians to help us as they were all defeated or fully besieged. By some miracle, or just by sheer will the Party survived. And the 1989 defeat of Communism internationally required us to climb higher, dig deeper to criticize and self-criticize. To adopt an evolution in our thinking. With our ranks decimated, the armed struggle In a complete stalemate, declared a terrorist organization by almost every European country; we evolved. The revolution could not ever be won with arms and ideology alone. Nor could we secure Kurdistan while every other nation on earth embraced “Capitalist Modernity”. To secure our victory and survival as a people in Bakur, Bashur, Rojhelat and Rojava we would embrace the ideas of a Jewish anarchist from Vermont, as re-interpreted in prison by Ocalan and implemented by the new largely female leadership of the Party. This methodology called “Democratic Confederalism”, adopted by the Party in 2004 would soon find actual expression in Rojava. The Wild West of Kurdistan, the North most area of Syria. In 2014 when the Civil War broke out the Party and its allied militias seized control of major towns and cities across Syria abandoned by the Assad regime. 

Thus we came down from the mountains, out of the underground and prepared to make a stand in Rojava where the radicals of the Islamic State were terrorizing our people and butchering everyone in their path. If we go back to the mountains it will signal only our isolation and defeat. If we hold these cities, if we showcase that we are fighting to defend not just for Kurds but for Arabs, Assyrians, Yazidis, Circassaians, Chechens and the Turkmen too; if we show that Democratic Confederalism is the solution, the way ahead for all oppressed peoples; then others will join us. And like the Nawruz mountain fires this uprising will eventually spread everywhere! There is a historic destiny to our revolution. To be victorious where all others failed!

Dramatic pause.

Out of habit, Comrade Target lights a cigarette and pours himself a cup of black tea. On the walls of the small office set up at the training base, which is also his room, Comrade Armraz looks the dead in the eyes. Or death in the eyes? Or perhaps both. As the posters of the martyrs plaster all the walls and the war expands everywhere around us.

Chapter (4) Four

“It’s not always so cold in Russia,” explains Polina Mazaeva, a Russian Chuvasan sympathizer and mother of a seven seven old named Yazan. Yazan was born to a Syrian Druze father who is not with them anymore. It’s complicated, yet not that complicated in virtually every society. As men abandoning women with their child is very old story actually in all cultures.

“It’s just that we have had to exhibit a certain moralistic coldness. A certainly ethical chill. This was the experience of growing up in the ruins of the Soviet Union. But we are not without beliefs. We are not without our sympathies. You just have to be careful how you talk about them. Things need to be rational, they need to be sentimental but only if sentimentality is kept in letters or behind closed doors.   

Outside Moscow and St. Pete’s life is often lived poorly. Nationalism was at an all time high. When many have an internal critique about our leaders, or the price of buses. Or the treatment of homosexuals or Chechens, perhaps we keep it out of our heads. Because the United Russia Party has made many advances to restore us to national dignity. Curb the oligarchy to some degree and reign in the gangster-ism of the 1990’s. The infrastructure of the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, outside the downtown area remains largely as it was in the late 1950’s. Optimistically better than what Stalin provided, but still brutalist, soul sucking Soviet crumble. Certainly the upcoming bus boycott will test the limits of ‘free speech’. There are piles of dirty snow all about the fourth largest city in the Federation. The very tall statue of Lenin still stands near the Hotel Marins Park. He’s still the default father of the nation. Only the ultra-wealthy have any admiration for the Czars, except for of course Peter the Great who stands tall over Moscow.”

Russia is a multiethnic, mostly single party oligarchic federation of some 158 nationalities, immediately east four hours from Moscow is the Chuvash Republic. The semi-central Asian Chuvash people are vaguely European and vaguely Asian; almost all are orthodox Christian and have never in remembered Russian history run afoul of the central authority. Never got themselves butchered or deported en-masse to Siberia. No, no, the Chuvash play well with others. The Chuvashan capital is Cheboksary on the Volga, but many can be found in Nizhny Novgorod, the Russian Detroit, once a closed and secret city called Gorky.

Who is Polina Mazaeva? A coy Russian Agit-prop? No, No, she actually has fallen in love with this tragic radical, Sebastian Adon. And they are preparing to meet, but have composed a number of Russian American, or Americano Soviet love songs and scribbles.

Why and when Sebastian and Polina began to write to each other is of no great mystery, both were in pure existential crisis. They wrote often and eloquently in the year leading up to his deployment in Kurdistan Syria and Iraq. These letters and poems all sounded similar, but not the same to previous love affairs across the Cold War, but they reinforced each others’; motivation. 

This is not a ballad for two people who move on. But fundamentally the reality of their underlying narrative was that one day Sebastian, who had more agency via his U.S. passport would fly to her and give her a new life. A more tragic but realistic understanding of the correspondence was that before he was going to do the hard part; give her and her son a new life; he would go to Syria, where obviously he could die. 

She brought the contradiction up only seldom. Their worst fights were Polina’s frequent accusations of Sebastian’s womanizing. Which was real, but not as magnified as she made. He wasn’t sleeping with every single woman friend he appeared in a Facebook photo with. But, he had lovers she didn’t see. He assumed she did too, but in reality, she did not. She loved the idea of him, but never expected him to ask for some mega long-distance monogamous relationship. It was strange. But she had a son and little Yazan kept her more faithful. Sebastian in the meantime took under half a dozen women to bed, the idea of Polina was sentimental to him, but also not exactly real. Periodically she would flip out over a woman he appeared with on social media. But, it would fade. Several times he threatened to cancel the Russian leg of the trip, but he didn’t actually want to. Russia was something he needed to see before he died. And, he probably will die out there like the 600,000 plus others who had perished in the war so far. Maybe in an airstrike, but likely from a mine. ISIS had allegedly booby-trapped every room of every house of every village, town and city they had occupied.

The correspondence was real. They uniquely relied on each other to float. The underlying assumption that their struggle was real, that Sebastian would die on some barricade rather than raise a family and that Yazan had sort of frozen her life into place. Sebastian had clearly acquired revolutionary delusion of grandeur and was now enslaved to his own expectations of heroism. Polina had fallen hard for her baby’s father and been rejected and abandoned. The Russian state and her parents shouldered some of the costs of raising a seven year old, but her life was a dull repetition and a soft cage.

Yes, the struggle was quite real!  Sebastian had several times averted ongoing suicidal ideations through her soft tone and patient words. Polina had taken on new online classes and high expectations of what was possible. While the flirtation with self-harm was mitigated by the responsibility of motherhood, she had dark times. They needed each other after a point. They waited happily for the next response which honestly flowed all day every day since he was an ambulance man and she was very per diem self-employed with information technology type assignments in graphic design. They wrote and wrote and wrote. Sometimes poems, songs or sketches. Sometimes he would tell her how hard he planned to fuck her, or she would write out something that seemed hard enough to be a rape scene. They both were getting what they needed out of it. A friend in a dark time. Two friends in long distance Post-Soviet love. Two dreamers who live in utter and total nightmares. It gave them something to believe in.

 Polina Ivanova Mazaeva throws back her crimson dyed hair and makes a pouty Chvashan face for a selfie. I love only three men! I love my son the very most, he is the future. He is happy and free and built from diverse parts. Yazan is his name and he is seven. Like any mother I have to love my son very first, even before myself! I am sometimes a dramatic and hysterical person, but this is who I am. Also, a jealous wife.

My mother is of unknown ethnicity, unknown as her mother was adopted as an orphan during the Great Patriotic War against Germany. Her father is a happy smiling Chuvash.

I love second, my forbidden ex-husband, Damien. He is in Dubai now, we tried hard to make this work, but he is Druze and I am Chuvasan, and never the two can be together. We tried. But it was too complicated. I love him still, I fantasize about him returning for me and carrying me off to the high tech parts of the Middle East, but he is gone.

Only the face of my son reminds me of him a little. They make fun of him in school and call him Arab, but this is not Arab. He is Chuvash, and Druze. Holy, actually, a reincarnated Druze inside him will speak in parables sometimes.

“My third love, and final for now is Mr. Comrade Sebastian Adonaev. An American. A New York revolutionary, a medical worker on ambulances and a very gifted artist. Perhaps better understood an upper middle class malcontent. Aspiring revolutionary? I hope he will not die in Syria, but statistically, it is probable. He has my heart in some strange way. Actually only with his spirited words.” 

Sebastian makes a lot of written reports, partly because he’s a writer and partly because his team is spread widely over four countries. He writes me love letters and also forwards technical reports. They are highly boring, but cast some insight into his Middle Eastern movements and affairs. I am not really invested in his brigade of foreign fighters bound for Syria, of course, but I admire them all for their relative bravery. Rather, it would be better if he just stayed in Russia with me when he arrives, which will apparently be on May Day 2017.

Sebastian writes to Polina frequently:

Dear Pauline,

There are eight people in or supporting the growing expeditionary party into Rojava. Some are working on the field ground and some from the safety of the U.S.A. Demhat al-Jabari, a Kurdish patriot I met in university, is negotiating with me in Kurdistan. He will likely go to Rojava, but return for school in the fall. Shoresh is an actual anarchist, he doesn’t really have a role as much as he showed up to fight in the Y.P.G. and perhaps do some gardening. The constant gardener doesn’t care about any bigger picture or whether Rojava will rise or fall, he will come for six months and depart. He has a wife and young baby, so it’s better, I guess. Alacan al-Biban Rasool is a Kurdish fixer boss. He’s a local to Erbil. He does Fixing, without ever taking money. Yelizaveta Kotlyarova is a Russian doctor, actually just a podiatrist, and Dr. Jordan Wagner is an ER doctor and they will do medical control from the stateside. Pete Saint Reed is a marineleading a little medical detachment inside Mosul. Justine Grace Schwab is working with Alacan al-Biban, also with Pete, and maybe could be our 8^th; but she has savvy and magic and cunning, but doesn’t play on a team well.

Our overall contribution to the humanitarian side of the war in the end was under forty women and men deployed in Iraq under the auspices of Pete Reed’s N.G.O. Global Response Management, and mere four volunteers from abroad, myself and a gardener named Spike going up in the mountains, and over the river and into the Y.P.G. A Peruvian nurse named Francisco who worked briefly with Pete in the battle of Hawija, and a Kurdish American negotiator named Demhat al-Jabari. So Pete Saint Reed was definitely a better commander and focused wholly on the work in Iraq. 

“There are a lot of complications,” he claimed.  One may have been the lack of a reliable hotel bar in Rojava.

My unit of four, really three in the end was actually all we could manage to get over there and into Syria. Several dropped out, unexpectedly? No expediently expected. The American activist drama queen, “VIP leftist” Cecily Macmillan. A medical assistant in training named Joshua Hunter and a Ukrainian EMT named Philip. Syria is not actually an easy place to sell volunteerism in America.

Few of these volunteers, in the end, proved dependable, but who could really blame them in the face of the Syrian Civil War bloodbath. Only the Kurds Alacan al-Biban and Roj did any leg work, out of patriotism. Oh yes, Spike did his seven months but certainly, none of that was dedicated to the medical mission. He deployed to shoot.

Really Pete Reed’s success, if you can deem it any success what he actually accomplished, in Iraq was about managing to access the W.H.O. money.  His military veteran can do bravery and being embedded with the Iraqi Special Operations Forces helped a lot. The potential disaster of our Syria mission had most to do with the near-total inability to reinforce or evacuate our team once inside Syria, being therefore wholly dependent on the whims of the YPG. Which again, stands for People’s Protection Units, the P.K.K. mostly Kurdish militia fighting ISIS as the primary Coalition led proxy. Who allegedly, and in reality have a deep “martyr culture” and a sort of contempt for Western medical workers. 

Sebastian’s reports, like his mind, dig deep then ramble out into incomplete destinations. Actually almost no one read them besides Demhat, Alacan al-Biban and Polina; sometimes Mr. David Smith, or Arlington. On the subject of Polina and Sebastian;

“We are both writers and both artists, she took only a slight interest in my Middle Eastern Affairs.” So Sebastian thought, but that was not true she followed Russia in Syria closely. The Russian media anyway called it world war three. Polina wrote many email letters and some he printed out and carried with him in a leather binder.

Sebastian carried her letters about to reinforce himself when the weather was too hot which it always was and death would inevitably get too near, which it sometimes did. Such was one;

My Dear Comrade Sebastian,

Hi, Maybe because many of all in my life you don’t know. You are important for me, that’s why I am winding all, afraid to lose you. I don’t want to be selfish, it just happens. And I really didn’t want any relationship before I knew you better, because I needed to take a break after the last relationships, and do something with my psyche and my life. 

Why do I love you? When you wrote to me in October, I just couldn’t understand why you sent me such long letters. Especially because most of them were difficult for me to read. I just wanted to be polite and answered when I could. But then I saw that you feel bad, very bad. And I have a rule – if I have failed so far in my plans, I need to support those who don’t see for themselves how much they can do. You can do all you wish. You can gather people and organize them for common activities. For a good deal.  You are a wonderful person. You supported me later. And I began to be inspired by you. I learned how you feel, how you sympathize with other people, what your heart is. You have a beautiful smile and so much fire. Simply, we are all people, and we all have weaknesses that we have to contend with. And you too, and me.

Now you inspire me more and more, and I like your ideas, because I begin to understand them (it was difficult before because of the language barrier), and of course this feeling – I hate it, but I miss you constantly and I would not want to share you with anyone. I’m really unstable for the last three years, there were so many reasons, that’s why I did not want to get attached to anyone – it would create problems for everyone.

But you’re great, just know this. I love your strange smile. Your brown eyes. Even when they are tired after a hard day. I love your voice and I love your face. I love your body (so far imagined in the pictures), I love your thoughts and that thing which guides you, the reasons why you are and what you do. You are a very kind person, so you suffered a lot. And you are wonderful, in any case, even when your strength is running out. I just love you because you exist. I would follow you everywhere and support you in any crazy thing, and I would share with you my most beautiful night dreams. And if you were nearby, I couldn’t let you leave a bed, I would give you all of me. Simply, you are very important and forgive me, if somewhere my old complexes I project on you. I’m not perfect at this. Sorry. It happens in only one timeline, then leaves. Wait a little, please, you’ll see a lot of good from me. And I hope you feel a little better today or soon. If you need to speak about any of your problems I am always here.

Your comrade & your future lover,

Polina Ivanova Mazaeva

P.S.  

Don’t have affairs with other women or get killed in the war. There are actually many people besides me who care about you!

Chapter (2) Two

Dem Baş Heval,

We are glad to hear that you want to come to Rojava and support the YPG.

This is a standard procedure we follow in order to determine whether you seriously consider coming here. In order to proceed to our communication, you are expected to answer the questions below. If we know you better, we would figure out how you would help us during your stay here. This is not a one sided phase. The more we know you, the more you will be informed about our principles, our expectations and about the challenges you will face. We do not want you to be disappointed and frustrated here. We highly value those who want to offer their solidarity and struggle with us shoulder to shoulder against the enemies of humanity in the name of freedom and justice.

The YPG strives for a democratic, ecologic, and anti-patriarchal system of self-organization; it takes its power from the people and fights for the people. We struggle to defend the dignity of being a human when there is no one around to defend it and to create an ethico-political society in order to realize ideals of equality, justice, freedom, and self-determination. We wage a war against all forms of fascism and capitalist hegemony that try to enslave the peoples and destroy the nature. We get our inspiration from the philosophy of Serok APO whose ideas have become a torch in the jungle of oppression for the poor and the downtrodden; not only in Kurdistan but also in all around the world.

The YPG is more than a military force. It is a revolutionary organization that protects the transformation towards the ethical-political society against its external and internal enemies in accordance with the principles of democratic confederalism. So its fundamental mission is to defend the people and the Rojava Revolution. Based on the philosophy of Serok APO, the YPG struggles for a free and democratic Syria where tolerance towards other political views, religions, sects, ethnicities, cultures, and languages is a fundamental value. In this sense the YPG is democratic and legitimate self-defense force against hegemonic assaults of capitalist modernity and against pathological ideologies such as ISIS that had been produced by capitalist modernity itself along with a deep crisis in the Middle East.

The YPG is one of the forces in the Middle East that offers an alternative to capitalist modernity and its freakish products: the solution of democratic modernity. This alternative solution is not an abstract formulation; nor is it a salaried speculation. It offers

‘economic community’ as an alternative to capitalism. It confronts the industrialism of capitalism through an ecological-economic community. It contests with nation-statism through an ethical-political society. This, however, radical and realistic position the YPG defends militarily, creates enemies more than it creates friends. Turkish state in the north for example is cooperating with ISIS. The KDP as the representative of the primitive-nationalist and petty-bourgeois line in the Middle Eastern political spectrum cooperates with the Turkish state, and tries to suffocate.

Rojava with closed borders and with embargoes, and even attacks to Kurdish people in collaboration with the Turkish state. If the Assad regime does not attack the YPG now, it is because it has powerful enemies around itself that wait for an opportunity to strangle

it. Despite the defensive position of ISIS, it seems that it will take more time to defeat these murderers completely. But that the YPG struggles with enemies of humanity and defends the transformation of Rojava in the direction of a democratic modernity is being appreciated

every day more and more by many. Dozens of the YPG martyrs from Germany to Australia and of the internationalist revolutionaries who fell fighting shoulder to shoulder with the red star of the YPG and of the YPJ are proof that the Rojava Revolution has already become an internationalist revolution that would never be extinguished.

To achieve a revolution is hard work, to protect it is harder; if not the hardest of all ethical-political activities. If a revolution does not gain a global dimension by establishing a network of solidarities everywhere, it is bound to be defeated by the reactionary forces and

byproducts of capitalist modernity. Hence, as Serok Apo points out in “Democratic Confederalism” that has been translated by International Initiative, “We need to put up a platform of national civil societies in terms of a confederate assembly to oppose the United Nations as an association of nation-states under the leadership of the superpowers”. So, people from all around the world, those who think that another world is possible and that one has to fight and confront with the monsters to make another world possible, would contribute to the platform that would spread the revolution of peace and justice.

You can download the books below and learn more about Serok APO’s ideas that inspire us. Please let us know about your opinions on the books that are expressed in the four works by Serok Apo we are sending you below.

http://www.freeocalan.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Ocalan-Democratic-Confederalism.pdf

http://www.freeocalan.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Ocalan-War-and-Peace-in-Kurdistan.pdf

http://www.freeocalan.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/liberating-Lifefinal.pdf

http://www.ocalan-books.com/downloads/en-brochure-democratic-nation_2017.pdf

If you want to support the YPG in Rojava you should then do this for the values of humanity, and not only for your own agenda. You won’t be fighting here for money. We won’t tolerate those who only seek fame through our struggle. What we can offer you is the possibility to join an honorable struggle for the values of humanity in the search for the truth and the right way of life and the possibility to learn more about the most important progressive revolution and struggle right now on the planet.

We prefer to have people here who want to be part of this for the right reasons. We don’t need people who think that they are Rambo – and please no Fascists. Rojava is not an adventure park, this war is not a Hollywood film and the YPG is not a PR-Agency.The YPG is not a place for people who like to kill people because of their beliefs and identities. We won’t tolerate people here among us in the YPG who are actual members of police, army or intelligence services. There  are other channels for these institutions to contact with the political and military institutions of the Rojava Revolution.

Supporting the YPG in Rojava is hard work, and you will need much effort and patience. Rojava is not a place for exotic holiday trips or for adventures. Supporting the YPG is not a game, and no fun activity for bored people.  Read this text carefully, these are the most important basics that you have to know and understand if you want to support the YPG in Rojava. When you have read this text and you are still willing to come to Rojava to support the YPG then you should answer the questions below.

These are the characteristics that people should have who wish to support the YPG in Rojava:

1. Serious in thinking, speaking and acting.

2. Honest and determined.

3. Respectful for different ways of thinking and living, cultures and beliefs of the people in the Middle East and ethical and cultural values of the YPG.

4. Willing to integrate into the system of the YPG and willing to learn, work, and live in a collective way.

5. Disciplined, sincere, and modest.

6. Patient and able to build up strong social relationships.

7. Open-Minded and ready to criticize and to be criticized.

8. Positive thinking and constructive acting.

9. Respecting the idea of womens’ liberation and its practical organizations.

10. Willing to embrace defending and serving the people as the most important principle.

You do not need to be ex-special forces, even not a former soldier, but of course military experience would be helpful.  We appreciate people who share their tactical and technical knowledge and people with experiences and constructive criticism, but you should keep in mind that we are not amateurs. Our six years of experience against our enemies would easily prove this. However, we are always open to learn new things, to develop ourselves, to work with a self-critical approach, and to overcome our failures for better outcomes.

People with special skills and knowledge would do a plethora of things here in Rojava and in the YPG, but to be able to do that you have to learn a basic level of Kurdish and you have to understand some basic things about the Rojava Revolution and culture, history, ethical values and mentality of the people of the Middle East. Besides, you should have some understanding of political, economical, social, and military situation of Rojava, Kurdistan, and the Middle East. You will find a completely different reality here. Without a certain level of understanding of all this, a sense of frustration would be inevitable. In order to prevent this, basic training will be provided for you.

If you are physically and mentally fit and healthy, open-minded and patient, willing to respect our culture and values, and ready to learn, to work, and to fight constantly for a minimum of 6 months in a war-torn Middle East country; then you would support the YPG in Rojava. Do not expect Western standards of material luxury and prepare for a life without internet and smart-phones. Do expect harsh conditions concerning food and sleep. Be aware of the fact that you will have to adapt to a foreign cultural and ideological context and military standards and rules.

What we want to know about you:

The following questions can be a help for you to write a text which is able to show us how serious and realistic you are with your decision to support the YPG in Rojava. The last part of the questions, part d), you just have to answer with yes or no. Copy and paste part d) and write your answers next to the questions.

Al-Prelude

“A Special Period in Times of Peace” 

SET IN:

HAVANA, CUBA

1989

Comrade Norma Olivia Sanchez has jet black hair and is petite. She’s vaguely malnourished for a Cuban, but still attractive and dynamico. Of course. She is and always will be a member of the Committees for Defense of the Revolution. The vigilant internal defense mechanism against Yankee imperialist aggression and unrestrained, insatiable sex tourism. Her mother was a fairly high-ranking person in the Party and told her of the struggles to defend socialism during the cold war years. Told her of the deprivations and economic siege beginning in 1989 when the Soviet Union collapsed and virtually all proto-communist regimes along with it.

“The U.S.S.R. was the sun and we were just a proud and tiny island fortress.  When the sun went out, when we lost our greatest, sturdiest ally; we would be in the dark and there were many things in the dark that could ruin us.”

There would be no more petrol for the cars and tractors, buses and power plants. There would not be fertilizer for growing food. There would be shortages of absolutely everything on every level of consumption. There would be long lines and no electricity. There would be no fans or air conditioners, there would be zip-zero-nada. And in this proverbial darkness of our times ahead, our enemy which had sought to ruin us from the very day of our independence would move in, emboldened by the so-called end of history.

I have some understanding that were it not for decisions made during the revolution, if not for our Russian friends and of course the own solid base of our people in the historical context; we could be living in an illiterate and deeply unhealthy place; with a brothel and gambling embankment running from Miramar to Varadero. 500 kilometers long where foreigners could just cheaply, scenically fuck our women, drink our rum and smoke our cigars in the sun.

I knew, the minute I was called to the office that we would not surrender, our great leaders, well the two brothers still alive; would not for one human second consider that the fight was lost.

I was there the day they called us all together. The top nine, the big two; the Ministers and the deputies of industry, defense, finance, agriculture, espionage later. We had known it was coming, the fall of our protector and benefactor. In embassy cables and diplomatic whispers; we also knew, it was our job to know that when the big bear fell down, died, and became reborn as god only knows what under American guidance! And its brightest, newest oldest and also highly questionable satellites began dropping from the sky; that nothing, not one thing would stop the aggressors to the north from moving in upon us.

We knew this was the beginning of the end of the revolution as we understood it, but what could we do? We suspected the Syrians and the Libyans would not give in easily to them at all. And we watched one after another as communist regimes collapsed in Eastern Europe and Africa. It was really our estimation, that by the time the dust settled; it would be only us, the Vietnamese, the People’s Republic of China (both which had embraced capitalism in most regards five years ago, Laos, and whatever the backwards hell they were doing in North Korea! We assumed Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Namibia and Angola would remember what we did for them but be in no position to reciprocate. And between 1989 and 1994, it would all come tumbling down. The failed architecture of a dystopian dream.

We sat together at a time when even the leaders were hungry and when anyone looked in a mirror they would not always recognize their own faces, for a look of despair had set in, inside oneself. All that we had willed as a people could be undone in just one year. We were all the same outside, for the siege had not begun yet, it would begin tomorrow and the next day and for the next ten or twenty years. And the Yankee enemy in the North, the pale colder place just a few days out by raft or one hour by plane; it would either soon invade, or try and starve us out. The ten million that had refused to defect. And the accomplishments of the last fifty years could go up in smoke, or simply in a long whimper, as the Dominoes began to fall.

But I understood, it was my training from Moscow to understand and my own Cuban sense of putting it together and taking it apart and refashioning. I knew that there was only one thing that could hold the country together, and so did Fidel and Raul. We needed to buy the time it required us to shore up. I am not sure that we prepared adequately for this day, actually. I’m not really sure we believed this day would come.

They drove us out to a farm. Well of course they didn’t tell us and we didn’t ask. And we were told in a meeting this was going to be a “special period in times of peace”, which was to say all the conditions of a siege and a war were to be upon us and really the only question was how long could we last until the U.S. gets bored, not tired for they have never been in a rush. More until the empire is bored with us, less obsessed with us. Long enough for the opposition to imperialism to recoup.

I remember in the car to the ranch which disguised the room for these situations. I remember wondering if this was the end of our experiment and life as we understood it.

“This comes right from Fidel; you’re all going abroad in a week. Some of you will join embassy staff or medical missions, some as private people with foreign passports. You will be going to allied countries and Western countries, you will be going to make some hasty business.”

Well really the whole speech was so much longer. But this was the short of it. We were not told in any specific terms how long supplies and foreign currency reserves could hold out on the island. We were told in no uncertain terms that things were going to run out, and that our job was to generate hard currency through the operation of a variety of legal and illegal businesses to shore up the essential purchase; food, fuel and probably armaments.

“They’re rioting in Moscow, in Warsaw and in Budapest. It’s all coming down. Even the Chinese are talking about calling it something else.”

I tell you it wasn’t all cigar smoke and mirrors and fake foreign names, Cubans look like everyone and we had trained long ago to act like anyone, and we’d been assimilating for years into the second world and there was a contingency planned for a cut off over time from USSR foreign aid, not overnight.

“What brought it all down?” Norma asks.

“This isn’t a polite or immediate question,” she was told. But the answer was several things. First, the West was economically more exploitative and comparatively more ruthless. Second, the Russian Communist Party lost its popular imperative, and third, the endless wars in proxy had sapped its will. But there was something else no one said, which was being said in the West; that Capitalism was simply a better system, no-no no one would say that. But everyone was always hoping blue jeans and popular gringo music would fall off a favela cart or plane hatch back from Miami. And it often did. Luxury carrots for all or for none says the evil murderous and often sloppy C.I.A.! But ours was a hard won thing that had the support of the people and would not be defeated by American imperialism and temptation.

We will do what we have to do to survive this! Too much is historically on the line, if we fall like the others this idea and all our sacrifices and gains will have been for nothing. We would plot and organize, mobilize and do anything we had to do to secure the revolution. We would survive this coming Special Period in Times of Peace. We will break the grim Yankee blockade and ensure the relevancy of Cuban-style Marxist Leninism for ten thousand years to come! And I will wear blue jeans when I have to. Four people with mixed but exotic features enter the room, two men and two women, clad in loose army green tunics.

“I would like to introduce the delegation from the Kurdistan Workers Party,” declares my chief, “They are quite expert in smuggling, establishing European business fronts and of course, they are committed revolutionaries motivated by the same historical forces as our own people.”

That was the very moment that the special relationship between the Cubans and Kurds solidified. Skill in smuggling and commerce would be exchanged for medical specialists and engineers that could design impregnable bunkers. Ten years later, Comrade Norma Sachez’s half Argentine daughter Alina Sanchez would become one of the first Cubans to serve in the Medical and Engineering Brigades attached to PKK guerillas in Turkey. Her Kurdish guerrilla name was Lêgerîn Çiya. One of the longest-serving members of the international brigade.

Ballad # 3: 

“An Escapade Across the Fall”

Involving a Russian Woman and Several Hand Grenades

Cultural Context: 

{In the Newyorkgrad fall times of the Gregorian year 2011 two mildly dangerous people, dangerous in their own ways; became for a time, star-crossed lovers that were briefly aligned (allowed?) to kiss and make up. In the cultural context of one, his card had trouble clearing expectations. Yet, in but in four dates, he could know that marriage was possible.}

While others were sleeping, I dream with you awake.

We walk.

These cobblestone-streets, below big dead glass towers, in late night-predawn, imbibe, intake!

What goes in the noose or the nose? You choose.

Past the hungry day dens of the money changers and their many harlots.

Near the Golgotha of the Jew-Crusader alliance.

Down near Vesey Street. Near old Zuccotti? Where but days before the barricades fell amid a mild defiance.

  This sprawling neon jungle blots out the sun.

It blots out the stars. G-ds, moons and hope. Have your fun on the run.

The show of you! The unseen scars. 

Nothing good ever shines through.

All the way we go again from Brighton to the Districts.

“That bright?”

The color of money is still always the color of woo.

I can pretend to walk tall too. 

In your tight yellow garish dress. Your fake smile, you play crazy all night. You do!

I was scally cap clad. A free for all. I was winding. I was bulletproof.

Your crazy big blue eyes opened fire on call, 

I’ll always remember what you did on that roof.

Your darting hungry look is aloof.

Cut the line. Steal the lightning. Like a dagger when you needed a sudden surgery.

A reminder I was a new attraction, a libelous lap lap leading to perjury.

But we are still alive. 

With a high level of possible use.

We went about the city in waking life- what we do at night reminds us of past times.

We are temporarily blinded by the flood lights of crazy, “Cut all the bullshit.”

All arrhythmic, ectopic the self serving rhymes.”

Blinded, you captured, captivated-compelled us to deeds that might make past operations seem like parlor tricks.

Past creations were to be scribbles. The world was created in lines of tar and feather and slave marriage on broom sticks.

To upcoming tomes, you’ll never bother to read.

Old brush strokes!

Gunshots now! From the hip to move my hips to your hips to your lips.

Now the shots are with the precision of Cupid coated round.

An Israeli sniper lost now found.

I am for you! Hear and I am aware! You are a quite quickly moving target astound.  

I want you to know a lot about me.

When others ask did you kiss me, did you hold me, you can say “I own him”.

Say, “He breathes in this city just for me.”

“He writes books for free.”

“He moves his limbs up mountains, for we!”

“He takes over trains, he battles monsters, he tempts the very wrath of the Jew G-d and the spirits to be with me, one more night after night hand to hand.“

You can tell them whatever you want, or our nothing. When they clear the coffin from the sand.

It’s just an affair after all I suppose.

You can tell yourself what I’m cut from will not be seen for one thousand years. Once you decide, the file will burn or the case will close.

“In the fall, in the fall with your ass up or back against the wall!”

Out by Steeplechase pier by the Eiffel Tower of Brooklyn, Night after Night.

When the sun rose. We were found again alive.

Full of the fight!

We died in the bar mid-sip.

We died on the coffin train!

We died in the cholera ship!

We died in the free fall of the airplane.

But since you tasted my blood, you bit my finger hard that first night; wax on your back.

Dripped on your shoulders and lower back, dripped on my lion ring, dripped on our hands clasped together. 

Your chest, your hips, your rack!

Your hand pressed in wax to my own. If we really died it could be with such a smile now.

How many flights?

Forty fucking days and forty fucking nights.

If they take me again in a raid. 

It will cheat us both. 

Of the magic in this, 

The sheer darkness in this escapade. 

And the old hope I know you still feel. 

The old lives, they make me want it too bad.

If I die tonight or in the morning, for the real, 

What will be with a very small smile?

This is real, shit. Pure. 

This is Russia’s white gold shit.

But don’t cheat me out of an hour a day or a year, or some life of it.

I want a good life, but one also with fake blond crazy blue you.

A loveless life is not any life. Poems do not raise children, it’s true. 

Ambulances move faster than Bentleys relatively speaking.

Less fashion for force, a bed for the fuck is still a bed for the creaking.

He can give you credit!

I can show you a freedom, which came out too cheap.

Not freedom to move and buy. 

Freedom from service, a freedom you keep. 

Servicing loveless nights and boring nights and weird strange awful nights.

Nights where they choke her.

“I want better credit and also possibly later some freedom”, was the last thing she said. Love and or a patron. A pawn or a power broker.

Freedom with eyes wide open to the sky.

Whine mine turn green and yours go silver, don’t ask me why.

And I can show you a life where you will never be afraid again, afraid of a boring lack luster loveless ride.

I confide.

“I may ask you to burn a bridge soon. That you’ve built over 5 years, with one goal.

I will provide all the passion and the petrol.”

And if there were things you thought you needed on the other side; 

I know how to replace them with better things.

Nights are long and days are wide.

I can cook and I can clean and raise children. 

I can save lives, 

You have seen me move a mob with words.

I shoot straight when I have to, I own many sharp knives.

I do have the strength of forty men.

And I know how to actually love then love again!

To thrill you with my words 

And back them with actions, like I did with the Kurds.

My sometimes stiff kisses, my hundred thousand years without, nights of white satin and solid gold dice, old-world lover loves. I cry out!

“When you kissed me you killed me and you saved me.”

It was only fair.

You’d just a week before nearly killed us over one single cigarette.

Because you’re fearless like me? Or just reckless I dare.

If you were my partner we could take on any army with switchblades.

Back to back, hand to hand.

Or help move a nation to rise, or two.

Fight the future from the place that we stand. 

“I don’t need you tonight.” She said.

I replied, “When?”

“To do anything. Just watch my back from dagger men.”

“The dead will bury the dead.”

Whisper, “Good luck Droog!”

“Come back to me alive every day and I will climb up higher with you when we’re wed!”

I will cross sentry canyons under no moonlight.

I will elude the follow-follow men.

I will uncut the spies. 

I have a minion, I know my ten.

I will break enemy lines under the dark cover and even outsmart the loupe Garrou in you.

I will make it through the forest pine.

I will always, life by life gets back to you.

And you will in this manifest of energy want for nothing. 

A backbone flute can’t be played unless you know the way of my spine.

“And our children will be the children of heroes!”

I am an American!

I think in color. Not simply in ones and zeros.

But this is not an American film.

You are pure Russian, but kitchens are where I cook. 

Not make self-murder like my man Mayakovsky

Your man is temporarily, a lucky man.

He had five whole years to lie beside you.

“You think you can get him off me?”

“Pull the pinout and toss it,” she said, gravity will guide you.

He did your nails, your clothes, your school, and your credit score.

I had under forty days to taste your lips, and I might start a bad war.

Notice the full extent of mesmerization.

How now, how, when? When are we talking?

“Were you not such a poet. Not such a good lay, one might accuse you of stalking.”

Your eyes, fuck me again, your eyes again.

They made love to me before my body could react.

When you first looked at me in the dance hall.

Nothing after was intact.

I for the first time, knew sweet surrender.

The taste of wanting to wait.

And as we lay in the forest,

Below the double barrels of the blue moon,

I knew that if you escaped with me I could love you for the rest of my life.

And dissembling, and more lives to come, full total swoon.

I remembered that we’d done this before.

More in the rest of my lives, we reunited our fires, we are very old souls.

What’s it all good for?

We can be old souls forever if it pleases you.

This kind of transgression is far worse than a sin.

“What the fuck are you on?” She asks with a grin.

But in the real world, in the world of woman and man.

It is really just a new kind of Russian novel. 

The grenades were laid,

It was only a pretty good plan.

Killing men comes with the job.

“So if I will love you for free, you will never love me, you will not leave your man. And I will die with a barrel to the gob.”

“You need it?”

I will have to open my own black heart and let you try and read it.

Then this Majik will be defensible with reason before it implodes as you claim it will.

Love intangible. Black cards have no limits, a fuck is a fuck and kill is a kill.

It has to be based on fact.

Proof?

Remember the roof?

Give me no longer than November, I will plan our escape!

I am a man of my word. I can counterattack, I can parlay and react.

All a man has. 

“All a man really knows from a cave is how to kill, eat, or to rape!”

Or, he is the things that he does and the vouch people heard.

In the end promises all will be unkempt, fuck what you heard.

“Dare what you dare.”

In the end, this will all end quite badly.

In the end, it’s just deeds and your word.

An endless escapade is coming.

One I’d like to share.

“Poor bastard fellow. Sad that you love me so much as such love is predicated on care.”

BALLAD # 2: 

“The Life of Constant Night”

Cultural Context:

Later while partly naked the terrorist notices that the Buxom escort, posing as a high-class courtesan, has no tattoos, which in his culture means that they can both be buried in the same cemetery. Yet, she makes small talk about wanting a tattoo of a dragonfly. And he wonders if that’s her brand presented by those who might own her. Or is she just a Russian hippy. And it comes up that dragonflies eat their males after copulating.  But I’m a Jew, not an insect he says.

She eats her mate!

She bellows,

Welcome Danger! 

She makes us all strange bedfellows.

“There are no atheists in fox holes near the front”, so they say.

But I was one. 

“I need no G-d to die happy today.”

Or to love! Or, do with my hands- what most attempt with only vain words. 

Or paper figures in a mounted gyrating flesh circus.

I lost once in the long bottle,

What a priest usually achieves in a prayer; full throttle. Never saw, only heard.

The Good God headed the boldness of my word.

Almighty Vodka is my Greek Deity! 

Always more inviting than the priests anyway.

Safer also to have children around. To work and play!

I believe I was a child around you. 

Once or twice in a long past, long gone day. 

It was short-lived. Adulthood was swiftly found.

To have met you in Penza. Before you lost something in transit. The first time around.

Years ago! I might have made your journey more, hospitable ok?

Based on what the latest lies. 

That you say, it all sounds unpleasant.

“Would haves” are everyone’s favorites. Regrettable?

Everyone is alive with regret in this shit of a City today.

There is no could have!

Only the will to do! Imagining the before times. 

Your lies and your truths both eviscerate me! 

I lack words and thus form rhymes.

They vivisect my disjoint.

The only thing I know how do well in a kitchen,

Is cook well and then fuck you at knifepoint.

Albeit, simply. My love for you is made twofold.

You are voluptuous. Striking be near, ever hard, ever bold.

A bit stunning, your total fear of darkness,

You’re hot and then you’re quite cold.

For my love, or my own belly I can do much, 

I liked your arms around my neck, 

I liked your grab of meat inside my jeans, 

I need your clutch. 

Your fun. Your fold. You and I, it seem to have lived a life of night!

We’ve slept out in the exposure cold, fallen asleep on outbound trains, 

The story you painted! 

It was told as it was used to get me bought and then sold. Am I right?

I’ve slept where I was offered, you’ve slept once there here and too,

I’ve stolen bread, you’ve stolen bread.

We both know very well the Manhattan finer things, well at last you do.

I’ve lied to protect myself. 

You lie supine and lateral and rewind, you fine dine and call sign. 

“You text in novels, she says, you can woo too?

“I’ll steal bread. I’ll steal the moon.  The universe for you!” 

If I had such reach with my plain speech,

If I can afford one, this is America! I should probably own two!

To feed the very stars with words of action and of promise and also of rope.

“Man I own less than four feet of your noose, but you are hanging on a mere thread, dying from your hope.”

The things I’ve done in past lives are made plain by 6 am in Brighton.

We hold hands sometimes, we stumble, we bottle tip, we bottle lighten. 

We all fall down!

When I was the man with Grey Mask, I used to kill for you! I’ve killed over a thousand men!

White, black, red, yellow and brown!

“The things you say!”

We are twenty minutes from the coming of the new day, the rabbit hole residing; 

You cling to me like glue, but you mold me like clay.

I lie, I wish to always lie, as if begotten battle cry, we try, to get old and never die with you.

“One day man, one day.“

My past lives melt, like midnight wax. Like Mason words, like the blue moon too.

I lose myself, I give myself, I bind my fate, and it’s true Jew.

The blue moon above us drowns out the sobs of my very old soul.

You lie, and I cry, and the circle sounds. Ringtones, bells and things made un-whole.

Sobs, of the stroll, good price for another dead soul,

The Russian Gobnick ghetto thug roll! The body count is getting higher as you see into my goal.

We lie on the beach, and midnight star wax drips from me, pleasure bleeds to you.

Not two fucks of clue. About the things we just might do.

I drip on her, she likes it. 

“The pain! The basic happy feel of pain.” 

The sealing of desire,

What they did to us respectively? Ya Tibya Leblue.

Between my legs, I grab your mane.

“What’s it all for?”

I’ll drip wax on the back, You’ll pour.

“But if it’s true I am a married woman, a desired girlfriend and have other fourteen lovers; then use me; “Make me for one night more, your tragic story whore“.

“You almost killed us over nothing”, I say.

“You almost kissed me over nothing,” she replies. It’s not yet but almost day.

A dove goes by, it decorates the Brooklyn sky.

There are blacks and blues eviscerated, there is no middle way. I cry.

Well we killed us! But don’t make that dirty moment linger. It was the wine, it was the mood, it was the; Je ne sais!

“Don’t get French with me my dear!”

“Dragon flies are temporary creatures, they mate, they kill, and they do not ever stay.“

Temperamental predator at best, what is it that you really hide. Where blind side your sword, your blade your knife;

“I bore my neck to monsters, and those monsters took my life.”

They surely know to prey on glorious pests,

Fastest insect in the world they say; but they eat each other. They are deadly. They are blessed.

Whereas I’d like to think you only eat your enemies, the knife point fucking, the dripping wax the rest of it, the salsa dancing; this isn’t Russia, we are west of it.

“I’m a dirty minded man, but I respect you and I love you as if I were your non-blood brother.”

“Sounds incestuous for monsters to be dating.”

“We’re blood ritual mating, we’re cold war postulating, we’re exodus deliberating, it’s dawn. We did this to each other.”

“I have never feared death. For I’m mostly dead already.”

“Try and fuck me til I break!”

“Dead men don’t use Black Amex cards,” she says, “dead men don’t buy sushi, lamb or steak! You’re not what I signed up for, you’re not like Americans at all. You’re crazy, you’re a big mistake to take.”

“Ha!”

“Don’t mock a man who thinks himself bewitched with love!”

Love is vast! In itself a pure annoyance mixed with the universe, a called solution. A backhand is still a backhand even with a white glove.

“He is steely in his constitution.”

“I’m also half-mad. It’s possibly true.”

Do not confine his gestures to his fire or his eyes as they shine a wild night made new,

“Make me prove it! My work. To identify the mountain. And then I will seek to move it.”

That is the objective anyway, enamored me.

For if I for one-second falter, push me off the very ledge, let death come freely!”

“What kind of name is Wal-ter? You pushed us over the ledge last week, in plain speak.

I am triumphant, let me have you! Let me have it all.

Potentially I fear, you might die for me this year,

Blackhearts defying logic, your fist to the brick of a wall. 

That night! Remember that night was the edge.

Kiss me hard, don’t look away from this now,

“You’ve pushed us dragon flying off the ledge.“

Written in September 2011 in Newyorkgrad

Written as “The DragonFly Poem #2”

Performed in a Private show