out from behind a locked
empty dumpster
tucked in a
dead end street
armed with
security cameras
that read
“SMILE! …or we’ll shoot :)”
a slick but groggy Malice
slips out of bed
into tailored times scare
gucci suits
stitched & shackled panels read:
“insert your ad here”
“mm mm good jailbird”
“did you know geico can’t save you
15% or more
on a life sentence?”
where all the convicts sing,
“verizon hired us”
and
“join our sprint scamily”
“starbucks: drips of Crips in every cup!”
“amazon:
shirk hard,
have none,
fuck history”
“walmart: slave money, shiv better”
and victoria’s no secret
peeling back
this technicolor scheme cloak
Malice
showcases
it’s crushed velvet lining
streaming
netflix
hulu
disney plus
while corners of his lips
curl around the phrase,
“you wanna buy a watch?”
cuz there’s a time and place to feel things
places with space
for bodies expected
to pull bootstraps
with their necks under boots
who can still get
prime two-day deliveries
just in time
for that vay-kay portal
to all the ways
that we’re making it
to taste something
that sets us
apart
coming up for air
in denial of the price
we pay to breathe it
open peeled pockets
reveal a hall of mirrors
with only half disguised dead ends
of grime exposed concrete
who peek along
the edges of shattered glass
that warp and mar
the lines they carve in our faces
and the scars they spanned
from our backs to our marrow
cracking with the memory
of those who bloodied their fists
to break thru a wall
knowing full well
another wall may lay behind that wall
blocking these suns and moons
from seeing
being
growing this world beautiful
blood
scabbing
caking
like drying cement between the glass
in the face of those of us
who turn down our eyes
without lifting a finger
in this maze
that demands witnessing
a mirror is the first thing
that will make you afraid to love
more inclined to try to buy
all the things they sell us
that will prove we are deserving
as we move thru
this labyrinthian concrete jungle
of sand, soda ash, limestone
in an isolated cringe
lost in this genocidal glittering gauntlet
where you can spend
as long as you like
free of charge
most people close their eyes
before too long tho
who prefer to stumble blindly
and bump up against cool glass
rather than
rise up against
the cold “facts”
of our reflection
a barrel of a gun
who’s ammunition is too costly
eyes tight shut
bodies grope the paths of ignorance
minds rattling off
an inner wandering
passed down
guiding us to stay the course:
“may our children’s cries
not crack
against leering concrete
the way they accused
our shouts
of slitting their wrists
on the falling shards
of their skyscrapers
let us not forget
that laughter, tears and screams
are part of the weather
that moves mountains
the riots of our myriad tongues
must cacophanize
the pews and pulpits
of the ivory churches of slaughter
to cease
the shepherding of bodies
thru their cultural paper shredder
refusing our ashes
to be sentenced
like dust on a chalkboard
tossed out
in favor
of the pearly allure of dry erase
making it that much easier
for Malice to
dematerialize
what we lived,
live,
and dream
bolstering
the so-called objective truth
that there is such thing
as a clean slate
a slate with no experience
a slate that for all its emptiness
leaves no room for grief
and even if granted
the temporality
of limitless ink
that passes over
and vanishes from
the shallow plastic of this slates body
these magic marks of modern innovation
will be little solace
if the lines our children
are taught to trace
are an alphabet of dementia
—a brisk collision
of unsuspecting bodies—
snaps lids back into heads
as a trickling crowd
totter to the edge
of a fountain
at the heart
of the mirror maze
Malice’s voice
crackles over a megaphone
hocks it’s wares
bobbing and weaving
round the ear cavities of
winded defunct human shells
gathered at this wishing well
downcast eyes lost
in the reflection of
50% off “everything must go”
a clearance sale of apathy
broken only by splashes
of tossed expired credit cards
Malice
the criss-cross stranger on a train
forces their smiles
with tongue depressors
that must be bought
separately from popsicle sticks
prodding
the roof
of some
long-since
foreclosed mouth
gaping
now
at the futility
of breaking
the numb gnawing
ambivalent silence
who always cuts to the front of the line
slicing
so many throats
begging air
to pass thru
in a chord
with
the mercy
of echoes
of sounds
bouncing back off
stone and bark
maybe even
the bleached brow of a skeptic
lodging a vibration
of translated resonance
back into the marrow
from which the prayer
sprung in the first place
Malice
scans it’s consumer’s
moldy half-eaten glazed donut eyes
unable to penetrate
past the corneas
where their fried synapses
light candles for their dead
Malice
abruptly withdraws
the sad mouth organ sticks
from the jaws
of a child’s
lil dumpy lips
smacking back together
a reflexive hum of pain
that even startles the toddlers mouth
snaps the crowd
out of their white noise stupor
the child
presses their lips
to inquisitive sounds
toward insistent sounds
again
and again
till sustaining
a trail of hums
headed nowhere in particular
but certainly away
from the conveyor belt
of Malice’s
10 step program
onto the lips of the crowd
who little by little
experiment
harmonize
feeling the voices of many
the voices of always
ever were ever will be
moving thru our lips
voices that climb over prison walls
voices that will stop a bullet in its tracks
voices that prove
there can be no cost of living
other than the care we give each other
voices of mothers breathing life into dead children
voices wrapping their arms around hulls
to sink ships of military cargo
before they can reach detonation
voices that tear the price tags off mama earth
knowing no one can make demands
of stolen land they have not cared for
voices that reclaim their labor
from lazy wealth hoarders
to serve the people and only the people
the people united
voices resisting the urge
to turn on one another
when the world on our shoulders
is too much to bear
voices that ride
behind jokes punching up
in a world who’s humor
always seems to punch down
voices that fall like rain
over blood gorged heads of state
to let them know
an age old newborn season is coming
voices tasked with being
the bearers of stories
that were never written down
voices that cradle
soul lullabies
birthed within us
when we’re alone and afraid
voices whose notes can trace
the trail of a tear
voices hissing
like the tea kettle before the scream
voices that smell like a stew
made from all the shit in the fridge
that was about to go bad
voices that reprimand
out of love
or rather
fear
fear of a world that hurt them
voices that ring
like instruments cracked
under the weight of singing truth
voices telling each other
how beautiful we are
when we stand in our power
voices that chide
“how dare you forget you are loved”
voices that grow the rose in the dark
voices that break
so light can shine thru them
voices that carve out love
from the most unlikely places
voices that travel on echoes
so when any one of us speaks
we know we are not speaking alone
voices crafted in all our many tongues
that devote our lives
to live meaning
into a word like justice
voices
humming songs
Malice can’t market
wanting to be filled with all our names
We are carbonados!
Metals no match for us!
We are carbonados!
Concrete is bound to bust!
We are carbonados!
Water that’s life will smooth us over!
We are carbonados!
Your cold walls just make us sharper!
We are carbonados!
Flash a reflection you can’t hide from!
We are carbonados!
Your lights can’t pierce, frame nor disguise us!
We are carbonados!
We can take the heat!
For when we’re cast in fire
Your metal will melt and set us free!
We are carbonados!
Grounded in the depths of the sea!
While when wrapped in water
Your metal will rust down in the deep!
We are carbonados!
In the wind our stones will ring!
But too much time out in the air
Will turn your metals face to green!
We are carbonados!
We emerged out from the earth!
How long can you lie steal twist and deny
What we both share in birth!
Malice
ineptly attempting
to shove tongue depressors
back into mouths
only making the notes louder
now
raucous bellows
uncontainable
by Malice’s
callous decorum
rhythms rippling the fountain pool
soon hit their bodies in waves
quaking them to twist and shake
unearthing
footprints left from dances
that were paved over long ago
drawing bodies
into kaleidoscopic whirlpools of touch
and departure
spanning the distance of
eyes locked from across the room
to tongues
cloying for the words
we keep caged
in the back of our throats
hands searching our bodies for comfort
a scent to take us home
a moment of reckoning
with the soil, waters, and stars
of the womb we all live in
an attentiveness
to an intimate expansive knowing
of the many spaces within and without us
interweaving our multiplicitous singularities
and communalities
that dissolve the sediment
that is every nation state
and defy identification
within the naturalization
of settler imaginaries
bridges
across
our
difference
like a table of people
with long spoons
filling the bellies
of those across from them
at the first sign
of rumblings
of this hunger without borders
that still respects
autonomous boundaries
that determine our accountability
to one another
that till the soil
making space for us to grow
bloom,
splash,
soar,
and burn
the many soundings of our erotics
no longer kept in the confines
of Malice’s blood money fetish
beyond the sexual
a mapping of existence as pleasure
pleasure as power
power we can activate
in our acts of mutual otherness
tanking the ratings
of Malice’s
hallmark channel
with physicalizations of desires
too raw to be televised
rounding sacred circles
woven like baskets by river veins
that cradle a world
perpetually becoming
beyond the limits
of infinite perfectibility
Malice
desperately
shoves wood slats
down sounding throats
only easing and expanding
the channel for breath
to dip deep
into the forgotten corners
of the diaphragm
and excavate those sounds
born
from the
paper thin cocoon
of
for the moment
indiscernible feeling
whose echoes
leave handprints
in rock
of something
wondrous
beyond
sur-
viv-
al
Jaz Colibri is a member of the Wood Street Community and a houseless trans organizer who provides mutual aid support to houseless communities experiencing evictions across occupied Huichin (oakland).