LOVING

I don’t remember deciding to be born but I had a happy childhood once I got here.

I accept what I’m given without cause.

I was a Christian who didn’t cuss and collected Superman comics.

These days I’m told that I have a problem with authority.

I say most authority is unjustified.

This proved true from high school hijinks starting a radical newspaper through my military intel career.

I got my top secret clearance just as I stopped caring to keep the secrets of the state.

When I got to community college I joined the model UN just as this state was beginning to invade Iraq.

The government had originally planned to turn me into an Arabic Linguist.

A door knocker.

Sir or madam, my country needs you to step out of your home.

We’ve come to blow things up and start a civil war.

Oh, and free your oil.

Shukraan jazilaan.

Instead I dropped classes days before finals and wrote songs I’d never play at open mics.

I slept in sunlight and read under the moon.

I quit more jobs than fired me.

I struggled between honesty & survival.

I survived war.

An idiot had just tried to risk my life for his benefit.

43 needs to answer for this.

I found honesty in poetry.

I befriended the homeless and the insane.

I learned how to be myself.

I learned how to defend myself.

I learned who I was.

I learned how to create my own story.

I decided that all of human history was my history and all of the world was my inheritance.

I decided that I didn’t need to own anything anymore.

I still owned things.

Avoiding addiction only to fall in love with addicts, I learned about love.

I learned war games dating from April 1999 called for an invasion force of 400,000, over twice as many as were approved.

I learned regional conflict and division along religious and ethnic lines had been predicted.

I thought back to 9/11.

I realized the con was longer.

He wasn’t an idiot.

He was an addict.

I protested and was ignored, like the thousands rallying against the WTO in Seattle.

Like the Mayday marches of 2006.

Like the fusion centers to infiltrate and get rid of OWS.

44 need to answer for this.

I got a passport that expired without stamps.

I ghosted a single mom who wore a leotard under her clothes.

I made my mistakes.

I learned what love requires.

I desired to make love.

I crossed borders without IDs and placed flowers on graves in Mexico.

I impulsively created art.

I dated artists.

I made up for things I missed out on in high school.

I tried to understand what I missed out on in the military.

I sat with friends while they were drunk and violent still stuck in a war they couldn’t describe.

He snored in my passenger seat, an unsheathed Ka-Bar in his lap.

I waited with him.

I tried to put my feelings down in words.

I told my truth.

I layered the canon over current events and switched the positions of the oppressed and the oppressor.

I struggled to retain my humanity within the current cultural storm.

I became engulfed by lies.

Torture had been promoted and made legal.

Some people defended their actions by claiming they were inspired by popular t.v. shows.

It comes from the top down.

I watched less t.v.

I watched more porn.

I wrote poems.

I wrote parodies of pop songs.

I dreamed of re-enlisting.

I moved every three months.

Twice I went hiking into the wilderness only to turn back fearing what I was chasing.

More times I pushed forward.

I dreamed of my grandfather who had been a TOPGUN in San Diego.

I read Carl Sandburg.

My parents flew to Mexico for an uncle’s funeral and I babysat their business.

I got high and wrote songs.

I got a DUI.

I moved to New York City.

I decided that labia looked like roast beef.

I was told she wouldn’t have sex with me because she liked me.

I had sex with her anyways.

She still liked me anyways.

Until she didn’t.

“You’re going to ruin me.”

I learned that though they didn’t sell my words still had value.

I imitated Dylan Thomas and applied for reality t.v. shows.

I moved back to California to start a business.

I got free weed samples in exchange for reviews.

I failed at cheating until I didn’t.

I wasn’t honest about what I wanted from love.

I bought a piano I never learned how to play.

I bought a cello.

I toured California talking to people about politics only for YouTube to take my videos down.

They’ve yet to answer for this.

I moved back in with my parents.

I built simple websites.

I wondered why we were building an embassy the size of Vatican City in the middle of Iraq.

I looked deeper into the 20th century.

I read an economic history of Germany.

I encouraged my friend to go to law school.

He told me how the State Dept came to talk to them about the legality of torture.

I began and gave up on a book proposal about creating voting blocs based on identities.

I went down untold online rabbit holes and downloaded media I can no longer access.

I started editing more media.

I collected historic speeches

I started mixing these speeches to beats.

I learned about the death of Lenny Bruce and the activism of Tupac Shakur.

I set the words of 44 against those of William Blum and Helen Thomas.

I discovered JFK opposed what had become an American Empire.

I created a form of truth I could carry with me.

I respected Kennedy more.

I mourned Howard Zinn.

I discovered Bill Hicks.

I realized the current world order is dependent on lies children can unravel.

I wondered what my role was in all of this.

I tried to heal myself.

Salinger was robbed of love by Chaplin and gave us Holden Caulfield.

Charlie was robbed of his mustache by Adolf and gave us “A King in New York.”

Martin chose love.

Jesus hated greed.

Angelina Jolie was beautiful & angry.

I learned that violence is driven by passion.

I found more inputs into the system.

I thought about what I wanted to be.

I wanted to be warm and happy near the ocean.

I moved to the Caribbean.

I fished and I fucked.

I visited a friend in Florida and got arrested for $20 worth of weed.

A for-profit prison tried to hold me for 60 days or $600.

I fled back to empire’s outposts.

On an island that boasts the last Spanish fort to be built in the western hemisphere I wrote social criticism modeled after the “Idiot’s Guide” series.

This fort is now occupied by the US State Dept.

I drove a friend’s car from Chicago to Los Angeles and heard about Occupy.

I bought a plane ticket for Oct 31st.

When I arrived at Liberty Park I offered a young girl socks and began a census.

I saw roles being created to control resources.

I got the resources to start a farms working group.

We didn’t quite know what we were doing.

We were ridiculed.

We were sabotaged by unknown actors.

Someone leaked me proof of funds being drained.

Some of us stayed in hotels.

Someone told us to hold meetings.

Some cheered our violent eviction.

We were told we needed to present our demands.

Those who claimed this sold us the Iraq war over peace 25 to 1.

They fired Donahue because he didn’t pander to shallow rhetoric.

They came to the defense of the bailouts.

They said 45 would be bad for America but good for business.

They criticize anyone who attempts to organize outside of their two party false dichotomies.

I lived in the park until our arrest, then with lovers, squatters and god until even the church gave up.

Someone stole holy water.

I hired a camera guy to document those of us involved in this movement to get our story out.

YouTube stole these videos too.

I retreated to the beach to think and heal.

I decided to open a library.

Thinking I should focus on money, I moved back to New York.

I slept in Central Park until I could afford a hostel then a room then my own studio before finding 13 Carmine #13.

I made up for time not spend in college.

I changed my name.

I became a real estate broker.

I learned business and how to make real money.

During the equinox, I drove an hour north to visit a recovering friend and was pulled over in New Jersey then arrested for $20 worth of weed.

Since the war heroin and prescription drugs have flooded our communities.

Since Occupy, identity politics have gone mainstream.

We are told that a woman should be our next president.

They say that these wars must be endless.

I got my SSN tattooed on my arm as a tribute to Spartacus.

I tried to remember truth.

I’ve made a half a million dollars, none of which I’ve kept.

I’ve called out the truths of the world and fears within my head.

I thought I’d found love and lost what I’d found and am recovering what I lost.

I realize I’m older.

I know what terrorizes us.

It’s when you don’t hold men to their word.

It’s when you only see a woman as a woman.

These are shallow subjects with loud emotions.

Consensus defines reality and honor defines character.

I’m a man.

Let’s start there.