American Horror Story: Corporate Monsters and Economic Slavery

While the world indulged its inner desire to self sooth with Halloween revelry I am living in a nightmare spawned from the belly of capitalism.

The modern depiction of fear seems centered around the malevolent ghost, the emotionless, wronged white male or teen angst.

Social horrors like racism are discussed yet white washed because the business of it demands a sacrifice.

Environmental or psychological horror is dressed up as mutated behemoths that ravage humanity and play on the fear of total infrastructure collapse. Or a repressed whole that’s given one night to live out its darkest collective mob fantasies.

My life schedule revolves around ensuring that I remain available to the cycle of economic violence we call capitalism. My fears are born of an adjacency to poverty, homelessness and failing my family.

In corporate culture the contribution to an accelerated growth model takes no consideration for individual worker needs, especially if one is multiply marginalized.

There’s a demand to continue proving your worth to society so that abelists can praise the miracle of inclusion at its minimum.

The global footprint of democracy turns a blind eye to basic human rights by clouding our vision with freedom from the peripheral.

Incentives are offered but the trade off is imbalanced when even minimum output can mean a detriment to one’s health. So in effect we are fed the lie while healthy and eager, then told that success is within reach so long as we can pull our broken bodies across the finish line.

When companies talk about expansion, colonialism comes to mind. Deals are made to invest in corrupt governments in formally colonized nations so the balance of power remains in favor of the state with the highest GNP.

Governments and corporations become wedded. The impoverished are given opportunities to pledge their fealty to an alien culture.

Upon assimilation the majority that cannot be employed within the corporate model are left to fend for themselves as the river of globalization swells with their blood and sweat.

It demands you to be on time, and that you leave your personal problems at the door.

Consider though the individual who spends more time working than reaping the so called benefits of the 40+ hours work week.

Mental illness doesn’t have an off switch. Disabilities strike outside the whims of simplicity, and pairing down decisions for the good of the company, or even one’s family unit can often mean not having an essential need met.

Of late I’ve had to choose between whether to move forward with investing in better mental or physical health. Having a car that we can’t afford or walking from work, despite the weather. I’m allowed about six of twenty four hours to solidify the bond with my partner, friends and children.

By focusing on my mental health, I can show up to work and perform at almost peak efficiency. Meanwhile my physical disability is compounded by the need to continue to show up at work. Even if it means traipsing across town on foot.

All this just to make sure my family is fed, clothed and housed.

The idea of being my full queer non-monogamous self is hardly an option. By the time I’ve taxed my mental faculties on the job I lack the spoons to engage in conversation or time that would help grow any other relationships.

Instead hetero-nornmativity is greenlit as the preferred method of socialization. This also means easier access to the incentives offered by the state and the job.

Instead of allowing for widespread accumulation, individuals at the top are compensated for finding ways to make their workforce more productive and less disgruntled with the class structure.

Ultimately, the choice I’m left with is that I am employed, food and basic needs are available. Any extra income is spent on making sure those basic needs are the only benefit we receive.

Putting money aside is dream for those who are denied any release from the pressure of surviving under the weight of systemic racism and abelism.

I’m largely unimpressed with any advice lent by those who have made it within the settler economy.

Any concerns they had with seeing the rest of us thrive got eighty-sixed once they touched a higher tax bracket. Because in order to maintain that height, there has to be a class system in place. The ladder is fashioned from the bones of the poor, disenfranchised Other.

I’m unafraid of spirits, vampires, babbadooks and zombies.

If I get caught slipping, I could lose my sanity, my family could lose what little stability we have, and my rage at the system could mean my death if I refuse to submit.

The scariest monsters sit at the head of the table, on a throne made of bones.

I Am A Look, You Cannot Hold Me….

I am disabled.

My passage is marked by the tap tap of my cane.

Of late, at work I have to field invasive queries as folks say, ” Well you never would have known…”

My internalized abelism would not allow me to show weakness amongst these wolves. Because a part of me knows that despite my explanation, there is still a waiver between faux sympathy and wanting to stroke my cane; objects have no opinion on how well or worse the world will see it.

I also had long held to those same prejudices. Saw disability through that abelist lens, further marginalizing those on the margins. I believed in the false omnipotence of my colonized worldview..

I told myself that by denying use of the word disabled I was making space for my partner and friends who are also disabled. In actuality I was in denial about my own condition and not taking better care of my knee has only made it worse.

Listen…..

I am disabled.

Shall I tell you how, prior to this, my existence had already varied between pleasure, pain, labor, violence?

Would you rather it be a lavish tale of taking one for the team? Some fully loaded made for TV trip fantastic where I happily ever after my black ass to the promised Land?

Would it be possible that life itself has fucked me harder than any lover, and I carry the cum of countless tricks disguised as situations in my belly?

Of course, your discomfort is just as visible as the disinterest in your stance. Once I lay it on the line. Wiping imaginary dust from those perfect yoga pants. That’s right, you probably should not have asked me am I ok. I didn’t beg your pardon, ask you to hold the door.

Listen. I am disabled. The pain that works its way from my ankle to thigh has no expiration date. This is not a surgical procedure away from relief. My life is etched in my walk.

However, you cannot cement my place in this world.

I am disabled.

Yet me and my contemporaries are jukin’ and jivin’ daily for bread crumbs. You gon’ respect this hustle. I don’t mind you checking the profile as I walk away.

Your love/hate relationship with my queer black disabled everything is a flame that incites my vanity. Makes me stand tall. Even though I hurt like a mufucka. I’m tired.

If you ask me what happened, be prepared to catch a partial rundown of diasporic legacy, trauma, how my ankle looks like a small lemon at day’s end cause I’m walking over 3 miles on a fucked up knee. How I apparently make too much to qualify for assistance, while actively living check to check. There’s no room for rest, only motion, my life etched in my walk.

I am disabled.

My walk is etched into my life.

And I walk proudly.

Inside, There is a Pulse But No Sound

It’s been difficult to form a cohesive narrative about my mental health journey.

I’ve reigned in the dissociation (think?)

Everyday is a slow battle of will. No energy reserved for writing. But I have discovered the power of imagery and allowing myself to be the subject.

(There was a corpse laid out in mock jesus pose. Broken, irresponsible)

I’ve attempted when feasible to capture my mood throughout the day…

.

.

.

I’ve discovered that the tub is a safe place, being unhinged from walking the earth, a salve on my feet.

There’s also a stain upon this small room, and the pieces shift, from the bitter taste of pills on my tongue, Salem shouting at my vibrating frame as the water drains away my reason.

These moments still meet me at the intersection, like a fellow pedestrian not willing to concede space yet awkwardly avoiding the touch of a stranger.

I see it like a chained gateway, refusing me entrance unless I’m ready to confront the damage I’ve left in my wake. Look past the reason I wanted to leave this world…

It’s a dark lonely hallway.

I spent several days sliding between remorse and maybe? Grief. My tears though come from self pity, joy at surviving, the pain I’ve caused. I want to retreat but cannot.

It’s a little muddy but I cried alot in a small room at work.

Then came the joy of recognition.

There is a person in the cocoon.

Emerging all akimbo but better for the toddler steps, trying to balance out the brain chem. 2018 saw many demons realized, removed, and so much despair.

As Subject, depersonalized. As Object, hunted, by the depression and trauma until a decision is made to turn and stand.

Even with that, there’s still a chance that you can fail.

Queer Radical Nonmonogamy in White Spaces

I speak for myself when I say that interracial relationships are not inherently revolutionary. I don’t believe there’s a magical moment when your partner is freed from the privilege they’re born with.

Neither are you presented with a free pass from micro- aggresions, institutional terrorism or state sanctioned murder. The distinguishment of being Other means the violence is more brutal.

Recently I discovered that some within my local QTPOC group are also nonmonogamous. Varying degrees of course. Even more striking, most of us are in interracial relationships.

One of our biggest dating concerns within this town is finding other queer, nonwhite partners with whom we can vibe with about relatable issues.

It’s not an immediate concern for me as I’m bouncing back from a serious mental health crisis.

Here in Springfield, Missouri the non white population is markedly minority. Fewer still are involved in Nonmonogamy or social activist movements. Almost none are atheist, anarchist or abolitionist.

Socioeconomics aside, I look at the roots of the town, how ingrained racism and classism are. The black population was depleted by a coordinated attack after the lynching of three innocent black men in 1906. Many moved away after that night. Some stayed, choosing to separate themselves from the horror, and survive in silence. Or they fully immersed themselves into the same community that saw fit to wipe them out.

In the seventies there was an influx of Vietnamese and Korean refugees introduced into the community by the Council of Churches of the Ozarks. A heavy conservative Christian influence has possibly shaped how that community views dating.

The Latinx community has been growing. Being singled out by an administration bent on criminalizing them has caused many to remain in the shadows.

Assimilation has been a vital part of how many marginalized groups survive within Settler Facism.

This division has been transposed into how we coexist here. You see it whether we’re talking job or housing discrimination, education, religion and liberal politics.

With generational trauma comes a bond born from the pain. The simplest things we feel in our souls as a collective. Not everyone is willing to act accordingly when those feels present themselves.

Many laud this town as a bastion of fruitful integration just because there are so many interracial couples and biracial children amongst the white population. Not realizing that familial ties and internalized antiblackness play a strong role in the lack of black couples.

The diversity at MSU is used as a selling point as well. But for many of my queer comrades academia is just a more formal brand of dismissal.

None of these liberal statistics extend to those who have been effectively Othered by their white peers. I’m certain that the few within my QTPOC group do not make up the entirety of the nonwhite queer community in Springfield. Some, especially our trans comrades have been so discriminated against, they have chosen to separate themselves from society as a whole.

For one of my other local queer comrades it’s about having someone who will gladly enjoy their family holiday traditions. Allowing the space they’ve discussed sharing with their white partner to also reflect their rich Latinx heritage.

For another, the lack of queer Muslim representation causes them to often fall into depression. Xenophobia runs just as deep here as racism.

Mental illness is another situation not taken into account. We have to rely on a system that is stacked against us, further diminishing our right to find assistance or therapy that takes institutional racism into account.

Like with gentrified polyamory, it’s not my place to force a radical, nonmonogamous, abolitionist view upon all black people. I will rep solidarity given that we’re so heavily immersed in white space.

For me, there’s something healing about mingling with other black folks, whether lovers or family. It’s in our DNA.

Most of my connections are online and long distance. Deep platonic friendships with folks I have genuinely grown to care about and love.

I yearn to strum those threads and connect with other black people. I’m speaking to every black person I come across, because it doesn’t have to be a lifetime of friendship. The briefest ah ha moment as we watch white fuckery commence is a memory that we’ll savor forever.

I’ve said before that I’ve grown comfortable with cultivating long distance relationships with other black queer folks as they present themselves. Doesn’t mean that I won’t continue to hope for actual localized situations to present themselves.

I dislike the cold for more reasons than its biting inconvenience. Wintertime plays hell with my depression. I will forget to eat, and worry over making sure I do my part to make sure we survive. To echo my partner’s musings, winter time means worrying over whether we can afford to turn on the heat.

We can’t deny that climate change is real. Our interference has only accelerated the process.

Necro-political policy has bred environmental terrorism. This justifies the assault on nature by filing it under Settler Economics.

Proximity to wealth equals comfort. The inaccessibility of basic needs factors into ones mental, physical health. Without a sustainable quality of life we scrabble harder to survive, by any means, or die off slowly. Our hustle and subsequent expiration fuels the machine. As I’ve said before, the perfect cannibal.

So as we roll into the holiday season reach out to ya folks out here who struggle with depression, executive function, are disabled and working to stay afloat, get ahead, just live through the winter.

#incomeinequlity

#settlerpolitics

#necropolitics

#afropessimism

#racism

#blackanarchy

#genderqueer

#queerblackness

#blacklife

Grits and Self Crit in a World About to Blow Up Anyway

I suffered my most recent mental health crisis in silence. I was at work. Eerily similar to my breakdown the day after Alton Sterling was assassinated. Sitting at my desk, a replay of the desecration of a black body interwoven with lived experiences where my own blood was spilled. Fighting back tears and hopelessness.

This panic attack was different than the rest. I sat watching my anger rise and my hands shook from adrenaline. I couldn’t work.

A little after, I’m questioning just how well I’ve treated myself. Leading to more questions, poking holes until I don’t recognize myself.

Depression will do that to you. I admit I shatter into a million fuckin pieces everytime. I hid it well. Get the dustpan.

My skin is burning. Feeling like I’ve lived a half life.

Blindly strolling along, taking comfort in these flames until the heat stripped me down to sinew and semblance.

Half shadow, disembarking on unfamiliar shores. Suddenly tired. Fed up with being. Hungry for an aspect of self that is real.

All of which led into a telling conversation with my partner and bestie.

In my heart I strive for a decolonised state of self, a journey for which I am ill prepared.

I’ve only been speaking out loud about being queer for three years. In that time being Othered has continued to evolve even more into a love language and economy of its own. It has to. The current administration is not silent about further stripping away our ability to survive economically, socially and mentally.

I’ve worked to evolve as well. Deciphering my own emotions, attachments, attractions. Learning to understand that’s it’s ok to feel a way and words to describe it. Seeing my own worth validated because I’m not alone.

Adopting words like agender, pansexual and radical non-mongomist to further myself from society’s perception of what my presentation entails. I’ve embraced my fluidity, finding some days when I feel sexy as fuck, or folded into the background, observing.

Despite my intentions I was still benefiting from internalized misogyny.

I was so in denial about that shit.

Justifying my amorphous allegiance to masculinity by telling myself that it was a reflex brought on by my mental illness.

Using my traumas as a baseline to conclude that it was okay to critique my father, brothers, manhood in general. Saying I Am A Man and we Men in the process.

Understanding now that I was proclaiming these labels while upholding the binary and benefiting from the social capital associated with masculinity.

Their words rang in my ears well into sleep. I didn’t sleep. I obsessed. All through work. Looking for words.

So to all of you who’ve allowed me the pleasure of walkin’, talkin’ and resisting beside you.

I.Am.Sorry.

So I’m taking it in, working to improve. Putting the pieces in order. I sit with my anger and sadness. Work through it. Neither of us is going anywhere. I write.

Within this little cocoon of comfort I was finding myself without a tree from which I could wax metamorphic, then catch wind with new wings. And I have certainly caused confusion and harm to those I’ve sworn to advocate for. Been taken up space that I should be using to be a better comrade and accomplice to my chosen family.

It’s not enough to lead indictments against misogynoir unless you can be seen and heard without it’s presence convincing the world to listen to you. Which means stepping completely from behind the shield.

Own my life. My super black ass, genderqueer life.

Songbook in Pictures….

newly born, wrapped in a shroud, pushing upward from fitful sleep.

brain waves change shape in anticipation, limbs creaking from disuse

pinch of light salts the eyelids,

beseeches me, hold on to absurdly abstract yet striking dream shards

a body, once stiff as an unexpected erection, is fluid, draining from the shallows, covered in primordial slime, dismissed

cleansed, thoughts tumbling about. shocked at my own breath, how poignant yet stale it tastes

rifling through old times, Harlem Renaissance memory poetics, socialist sleepovers

default settings turned off a nigga free ranging as though tomorrow will reveal a reset button…

turn to face the sun, however, nevermind that exhaustion runs cool fingers through tangled locs, the hustle pervades, jarring as auto pay alerts, angry white stares on the bus

it’s a trial each day motivating the self when sleep seems so enticing, to lay you down again until the closing of time

would like to choose the hour, have friends recall the day, moved from existence to being, Otherness transfigured unto a galactic song

fine line walking long distance to the edge of my existence. ..

would rather be high instilling order with a crop, blindfold and cuffs, satisfaction mutual

here I sit, connected to earth and all its poisonous delights, deflated, instigating an uprising in silence

I still wanna fight but sometimes I get tired. ….

Broke Radical Mathematics

America has feasted on the poor for so long even poor people look for ways to get invited to the table. The dying middle class look for productive ways to guard the door. The rich spit out meme worthy quips so that we can pretend that their innovations are for the benefit of all.

This is not a new trend. Southern Dixiecrats used this misinformation post-reconstruction as a way to drive a wedge between poor white and black sharecroppers looking towards communism as a way to ease the burden of poverty. By preaching white dominance to the poor white masses, they effectively brought about the rise of the Klan, recruited watchdogs for the blooming prison industrial complex and limited access to wealth by promising that the American dream was being reshaped to only include white males.

Generational poverty was revamped as pride. So effectively that entire towns have disappeared because the older citizens felt it necessary to keep their children from advancing to assure a steadily dying legacy. This also led to mass rioting across the country as the template was adopted by northern politicians and businessmen looking to quell the rise of inclusive unions, as well as exclusively non white organizations.

The Talented Tenth used this method to uphold the agenda of the NAACP, black clergy and middle class as a way to separate the black elite from black Southerners fleeing state sanctioned terrorism in the south. By erasing their own southern roots, blaming crime in the hood on their southern cousins who couldn’t yet afford an upwardly mobile lifestyle. They built up what is now widely known as respectability politics, legitimizing blackness in the eyes of white society to sue for rights under laws not written to include us.

Everyday we’re provided with statistics showing that the minimum wage is complicit in keeping marginalized black and brown communities from collectively rising above the poverty line. Most recently we’ve been informed that you can’t even afford a two bedroom apartment with the average wage. I can go so far to say that even with my slightly above average wage I still can’t afford decent housing, groceries or medical care and set money aside for emergencies.

This isn’t due to a lack of motivation. Outside of free therapy, writing is also a side hustle that has also become a means for me to express my dissent, engage with like minds and uplift the voices of nonmen. I’m always looking for ways to make extra funds. Recent events have pressed me to request cash from friends and family so that I can make the summer tolerable for me and mine.

Daily, queer, femme, disabled, trans non men have to seek ways to make money due to the consistent life altering laws in place that keep them from gainful employment, grants and government subsidy. This includes sex work, which has been criminalized to such a degree that many are thrown into dangerous situations just to have a place to stay, food to eat.

How is it that a so called free democracy allows a majority of its population to live in poverty? How is it that those who are floating just so above the poverty line assume they’re to thumb their noses at the rest of us?

Settler Fascism demands a status quo.

Some of you, hood raised, from humble roots act ashamed because you have aunties, cousins and such who do hair in the back room or sell plates out the kitchen to make ends meet. As if some of that money hadn’t at some point made your life easier. Urban gardening wasn’t created as an aesthetic. It was done to supplement, and ensure that folks in the house and neighborhood had access to fresh fruit and vegetables.

In home hair salons have been around ever since black folks gained the opportunity to express their originality and style. Hustling has sent many a bougie mufucka to college. Yet these same individuals will look down on their family still squeezing pennies for rent.

America is the world’s most efficient cannibal. It will gleefully teach you that it’s prudent to sup upon the leavings of capitalism, live above your means and die in debt just to say you have attained materials that have no moral substance. I say this because I too am complicit. I work a job, stress over bills, shuffle funds so that my family can have moments of joy that cost. None of us are better than the other. Anyone participating in this grand hustle is not free to cast stones. We can point out its flaws, cite social anarchist theorum until our words bleed, but until this economy falls into the dust, we are all enslaved. Poor, anarchist, atheist, well to do and celebrity alike.

Slaves.

Barefoot on Stone, Revised

The “black queer” cannot claim an ontology outside of blackness….

The “black queer,” then, is a catachresis. The problem I am laying out here is not merely the impossibility of folding the black queer into humanity (humanism) or the ‘community’ of objects (internal exclusion), but whether the injury directed at this being is registered as anti-blackness at all. The prevailing problem is that the injury sustaining this catachresis is so incomprehensible that it is doubly erased, and this is what I will call
‘onticide.’

– Calvin Warren

Onticide

Afro-pessimism, Queer Theory and Ethics

_____________________________________

I am a nonmonogamous, agender, queer black fugitive. Love and acceptance, as it has been taught from a colonized perspective, damn sure don’t love and accept me.

—

Accepting my queerness has taken all my adult life. Being accepted is a work in progress. I don’t fit within the greater LGBTQ2IAA community with ease.

—-

I have passing privilege, am male presenting, older. I also have two biracial children with my white, nonbinary transmasculine nesting partner. As neither of us pass we are coded as a straight, albeit strange couple. We have to orbit the nebulous pre-fixation that has bound the gay community into particulars.

—-

Daily shedding the sickly skin of misogynoir, battling to use the perception of my masculinity and the privilege it affords to provide space for my newfound non-men, enby and transguy comrades, I have effectively alienated myself from most of my long time friends.

—

This was expected. Still I worried over the idea of losing that acceptance once I decided to be more public about being queer. I worried about the silence from my family turning to ostracization. I worried that excising pieces of myself meant the whole of me sliding into Oblivion.

—-

I discovered that my various intersections all ran amok of what is acceptable.

—-

Unspoken hierarchies became clear. My relationship status along with my presentation was subject to scrutiny. I understand and agree, wholeheartedly, considering our perilous relationship with Eurocentric Settler Fascism and state violence.

—–

I continue to do the work, putting all my energies into writing missives that will stoke these radical fires already burning. Not tossing my relationship around as if it, in itself, is an act of resistance.

—-

Blessings to the myriad, majestic, multitude of bodies that push at the boundaries of queerness.

—-

Gender, like love as we know it, is a spectre of colonial settler politics.

—-

Dis-identifying with the stereotypes that have been used to ground white male fears about black super masculinity has made me even more vulnerable to the fractured machinations that are currently rooted in capitalism. My presentation has not changed all that much throughout my life Revelations.

(Side note, I gladly revel in the strength of my ancestors)

—-

While dodging the hunt at each turn, I have also learned to glide, strut, stay sexy, speak what I know, shut up and listen, love the multitude, be unapologetic about my stance.

—-

I seek to disentangle the self from colonized gender perspectives. A spiritual and psychological reformation that will allow me to reconnect with the ancestral norms that Eurocentric supremacy has effectively erased.

—-

Black queerness for me means a heightened state of awareness. I’m not a placeholder for fetishes, affirmation of the merits of how well I can integrate into society.

—-

This society was not built to accommodate or contain me. My very potential is a threat. I drag my black ass from bed each day, determined. One long look at my sleeping children, kiss my nesting partner. Then I pop my collar and jack my slacks. No regrets. No quarter given…

Look into my eyes, my defiant mind-frame, relying on a love ages old, the song of my ancestors drowned in cold oceans, slow heartbeats strong as the blackness coursing through my veins.

Constantly we are reminded that our genetic connection to the labor pool that shaped the settler economy is not access to privilege.

—-

Blackness as negation of whiteness. Queer outside the bounds of acceptable or easily categorized blackness.

That moment when you stop striving for humanity, and remember that it’s alright to just be a part of the universe, apart from the world. Part of the world. Departed.

—-

And I’m good with that.