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1. Reflections
"Hierarchy, dominance and submission, repression and power - these are facts of everyday life. Revolution is a process, and even the eradication of coercive institutions will not automatically create a liberatory society. We create that society by building new institutions, by changing the character of our social relationships, by changing ourselves - and throughout that process by changing the distribution of power in society. It is by the constant building of new forms of organization, by the continual critical evaluation of our successes and failures, that we prevent old ideas and old forms of organization from re-emerging."- Carol and Howard J. Ehrlich, Reinventing Anarchy: What the Anarchists Are Thinking These Days

the wreckage of humanity has been strewn across the land and now the hour of desperation is at handwe the maggots feed off the dead seeking solace in a bed of broken glass we bleed infected water beneath bright skins of polished steel through empty, yearning, starved and frustrated hearts which long for risk and reasonthis is a standard and sterile half-life to leadempty facades conceal slow decay within these new dark ages which breed discontent to give up all hope to see the dawn reveals a victims face beneath the veneer struggling to show that it's been wronged led astray by the myths of the Father with ancient wounds often ignored fighting for scraps from the table while we slowly rot on the floor struggling for balance amid these unholy lies reflecting terror and chaos we are born into suffering with constructs icons, idols, and eyes which manifest and forecast our fear of our own demise but on the eve of the apocalypse you can burn these words into my flesh:“we are tortured and insane disillusioned and mundane unknown and unnamed desperate and enslaved and we want something more”

2. War By Other Means

"The United States government will not allow any opposition to the underlying fascism of its foreign and domestic policies. And when that opposition becomes too strong, they deny us the rights to stand up against the status quo. Our government understands that the people have the full capacity to take back the power, and that frightens them to death."- Anonymousevery

voice you’ve silenced and every life you’ve takenrecollections from your distant pastthe tortured and the dying from a legacy of hatredare back to echo in your ears screams you thought for sure wouldn’t lastbecause you can’t kill an idea, I will not be ruled…you can’t kill and idea and we will not be ruled…“disrupt misdirect isolate and neutralize”like the Trudells who burned alive in ‘79now those enemies of the hour are the focus of this momentfor as long as we are here every voice remains alivebecause you can’t kill an idea, I will not be ruled…you can’t kill and idea and we will not be ruled by feari pledge no allegiance to the flag of the undeniable mistakes of americawhich due to plutocracy for which it standsso many nations and their gods have become invisiblewith liberty and justice reserved for a precious chosen fewlet our allegiances remain with those betrayed by the façadefor the calm is an illusion“the struggle is not over…it assumes new forms”for no matter what the face, no matter what the name,it’s still…warthe laws are silent in times of war

3. One Step Away

"we but teach bloody instructions, which, being taught, returnto plague th' inventor."- Shakespeare, Macbethfacing

brutality I struggle with moralityI don’t think that I can take it anymoreindoctrinated into cultural norms functionless forms:“dominate and bleed infect with greed” and we succumb…I aggressively inherentlyam the illegitimate child of the gun intertwined with the dollar signand now as I walk through the valley of the shadow of deathI have become your evil and your hate is within mefor the rod and the staff have taught me all too wellthese hands would drip with blood if I traded truth for certaintypower beckons to the unsure and afraidthe atavists of ignorance who initiateour bodies cast the shadow of everyone who has ever lived andall the gods all the demons all the heavens and all the hells arewithin us…but that I, privileged revolutionary could prescribe ritesof passage for all? in preparing bloody defenses let our lineageremain clear: Armenia, Nanking, East Timor, Cambodia, Rwanda,Iraq, Kosovo the shattered lives and battered wives, underscored by forcefullies are inside of us, inside of meI aggressively inherently could destroy humanity I’m only one step awaywith one single blow unjustified I’m only one step awaycaught between rule or be ruledwant or want notwith no easy way out

4. In The Balance

"In a highly developed society, the Establishment cannot survive without the obedience and loyalty of millions of people who are given small rewards to keep the system going: the soldiers and police, teachers and ministers, administrators and social workers, technicians and production workers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, transport and communication workers, garbage men and firemen. These people - the employed, the someway privileged - are drawn into alliance with the elite. They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system fails. That will happen, I think, only when all of us who are slightly privileged and slightly uneasy begin to see that we are like the guards in the prison uprising at Attica - expendable; that the Establistment, whatever rewards it gives us, will also, if necessary to maintain it's control, kill us"- Howard Zinn, A People's History Of The United States

while I choke strangled by the hands of time my life slowly slips awaythe dollars I save aren’t worth the days I spendwith images of freedom as lies in my headthe hand that feeds will always bleed my drythrough these hours these minutes these moments are mineintensifyfor no one else will guide the waybreak the silence before it breaks us…down to a point from where there’s no escapewhere regret destroys whatever life remainsand you when you’ve told yourself a liethe path of least resistance destroys you in timeis it heresy to want to live today? that’s not asking too muchso many are barely getting by and starving in the streetswhile in denial of death yet still afraid to be freewe grovel beneath the pantheon of securityassured as we sell our dreams to buy our painthat “the meek shall inherit” when only the strong will reignall life hangs in the balance I won’t wait until it dropsI can’t wait they might not have another dayI have to live I might not even have evenone more day

5. When There's Nothing Left To Lose
"In this head the all baffling brainIn it and below it the makings of heroes."- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

she’s tried so hard to fit the moldto embrace the image she’s been soldshe’ll binge and purge to fill her soul but she’s wasting away...he thinks the cure for his frustration liesin the battering of what he despisesthe children face his ruthless eyesthey’ll grow up blind with tears of ragein agony eternally but we are we practicing our hunger well?cowering in corners can we find freedom beneath the blows?crawling like roaches awaiting mercy from the mercilessdecimated alienated with nothing left to loseleft to die alone he fights disgracenot immune even to the fear he’ll faceas he comes to know that he’s been condemned by those who profit from his painher golden years have rusted throughand now there’s nothing left for her to dobut demand the respect she longed for in her youthand hope that when her time comesthat she will not have died in vainare the poisons we endorse worth more than our flesh?is the only peace we’ll know awaiting us in death?I’ve reached the limit there is nothing left to loseyet a choice still remains a choice still remains to surviveI claim this lifeI claim this hopeI claim these horrors for my ownI claim it all

6. Unrestrained
"He only earns his freedom and his lifewho takes them everyday by storm"- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

take what you feel inside of this room and break awayI’ll bring the feeling of this moment when I leaveenvision what life could be if move beyond our comfort and abilitywe’ll rot in this tomb until we start to moveno one is handing “change” our wayfacing each day with so much to sayand in the absence of action even our screams are worth somethingwhat we want we must create what we risk will be regainedwhat we’d assume we must forsake what’s been destroyed…what have we done? what do I know? how far are you willing to go?never restricted by who I am supposed to belooking beyond all that I can see to make this a movement againinstead of only a scene do you realize what that means?what we make of this energy is everythingbut in the absence of passion our screams are worth nothingwhat we want we must createwhat we risk will be regainedwhat we’d assume we must forsakewhat’s been destroyed can be replacedtoo many years spent “screaming for change”and I see now that what remainsis the time I give and the chances I takein the way I live and the choices I make

7. Legacy

"No real social change has ever come about without a revolution. People are either not familiar with their history, or they have not yet learned that revolution is but thought carried into action."- Emma Goldman, Anarchism: What it Really Stands For

with empty minds and vacant staresour lifeless generation is drawn towards the illusions of endless offered baitthe same selective vision let boxcars carry millions to their cremationinaction masked by pseudo-satisfactionso many lives have burned away"another night with nothing to do" is an infectionwhen anger has no motive and force has no directiona lack of self control invites every distractionfrom the holocausts we'd see and a world in agony1944 through 1998: children dead at Birkenau or Tibetans laid to wasteexcuses become our legacypostponing introspection through denial and self rejectionthere is no inevitable oppressionwe are digging our own gravesafraid of what we feel so our lives remain the sameuphold the status quo as if there's someone else to blamewho will cast away our ashes after we've thrown ourselves into the flames?"I can always do it tomorrow" wellyou might as well be dead todaythis is my revolutionthe epitaph of our collective grave will read that "work never made us free"our strength maintained by never giving inwe have so much to lose and so little time left to beginfor even when we're gone the effect of our legacy will still remainso we've got to break itin time alone as the years go bywhat I feel can't be deniedwhen tension builds but nothing gets changedI strive to understand and redefine this rageand fight for a new legacy

8. An Awakening
"People grow so used to fear, to murder, to contempt and hate that they become deaf to whatever in them whispers that maybe they are wriong and their attitude simply reflects what they loathe in their own lives. That is why they prefer drugs to suppress their despair - the illusion of instant cure keeps them going. But the canker which devours them remains."- Raoul Vaneigem, The Book of Pleasures

are we the dead shuffling faceless?an aimless mass of corpses awaiting a not so distant end?numb to pleasurenumb to painoverwhelmed by our surroundings and the traps we have laid?to protect ignorance from arrogance we carve this skin of stoneand as the weights of cast and character layer with the yearswe drown at the convergence of rivers poisoned by this worldeach second I let slip byevery feeling I sacrificethe emotions which I denydrag me down into the depths

9. Are These Our Lives?
"He had learned the way of things about him now. It was a war of each against all, and the devil take the hindmost. You did not give feasts to other people, you waited for them to give feasts to you. You went about with your soul full of suspicion and hatred; you understood that you were environed by hostile powers that were trying to get your money, and who used all the virtues to bait their traps with. The store keepers plastered up their windows with all sorts of lies to entice you; the very fences by the wayside, the lampposts and telegraph poles, were pasted over with lies. The great corporation which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country - from top to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie."- Upton Sinclair, The Jungle

under the ruins of a paradise never to be knowncrushed beneath the feet of gods who reap what we have sownas the industrial neo-fascists slash and burn through fleshendorse the individual and sacrifice the restI want the truth to be toldthat we are more than the sum of what we're soldsocial darwinist manipulationmultilateral agreement for the devastation of all but the hegemonwhile we as one are sacrificed on the altar...in the age of the refugeethis era of death for profitideas alone will minimize the fringeorganization can enhance empowermentagainst forced abortions sterilizations clitoridectomy aberrationsoil addiction inculcation while alternatives face negationby those who anesthetize the mind and invest in broken livesdisorganize overpower exploit and stratifythe distorted promise of a free exchange haunts us through the debts we payto the alliances who turn me against all those around me and against myselfgeneration after generation enduring apocalyptic visionsin individual private hells with bodies weak and minds distorted with nothing left to sellwhile the masters of the new feudal age drink to satisfy an unquenchable thirstgulping our blood and our sweat and spit back liesare these our lives?

10. Saints And Sinners
"On behalf of the earth and mankind, we must join in laying claim to everything which religions have hauled off into the heavens and bestowed upon their gods: truth, liberty, happiness, justice, goodness. We must recognize that morality is totally independent of theology and divine metaphysics, and has no source other than the collective consciousness of man""- Mikhail Bakunin

I am incomplete damaged and imperfect this world is not divided between saints and sinnersforgive me for being human...I struggleI sufferI know what it means to survivethis world is crumbling I’ll take my flaws with me and beyond youbeneath it all...“family values” with national pride will lead to the new cross burningsand who will be hanging next from that tree?who’d have my sisters stay at home to feed and mend and tremble?their place is not on their backs or on their kneeswe look to anyone ‘to make the trains run on time’then praise their shovels as we’re buried alivethe days pass by unnoticed as we choose not to see the barsimprisoned for life while free to gowith a key clutched in our desperate hands all alongbeyond those walls I am wounded and scarredisolated but aware and aliveI alone maintain controlI accept no higher soulI am my beginning and my endthis is a call for redemptionfor those I know to have been led blind with the wounds of the forsakenI’m still screamingand I might stand alone with no one left to listenbut the last words of this song have yet to be heard...