five from Unemployment Insurance

When I shave my head I will
claim each hair as a dependent
on my taxes. When I am denied
by unemployment I will send
the bag of rotting potatoes
in my pantry to the state house.
When they ask for work search
activities I will instead say fuck the police,
because Sean Bonney told me to.
When my boss blocks my unemployment
claim I will simply block their driveway
until I decompose, elegantly, in
their driveway apron. I will send
a bouquet of past due bills
to whoever gave them 5 stars on Yelp.
I will enter in every week until
I expire the birth dates of the dead
-- the coordinates to where
we are throttling-- in the weekly
claims field. The conspiracy
of a dying empire is only to
kill faster. I am entirely overwhelmed
by the collapse of the political
economy in my body so I am
sorry for the late reply.

There were jokes or rumors for
awhile that the city was dying
& then that it was resurrecting
via the miraculous intervention
of various celebrity chefs
turning empty storefronts
into petit bourgeois playgrounds
& the under educated &
formerly incarcerated into
their personal servants.
This Cleveland chauvinist image
-- the image of the resurrected city
can be seen now as a mirage offered
as consolation or distraction
from our continuing
brutal conditions. If those were the
good times & these are the bad times
I’d like to abolish “times”.

People on the internet are talking to each other
too little & about each other too much

I imagine this will continue & worsen.

I’m not writing poetry anymore I’m writing unemployment insurance
& I resent every aspect of the system that produced this
relation to my work

But I keep thinking
that has always been our relation
to this work: a desperation
for reimagining the context
of our lives as fluid
or malleable to a larger
power of masses

so again out of this desperation I am trying to make poems

I am a cute selfish animal
in the time of the great
ruinous longing. I ate
an apple. I ate a banana.
I drank a pot of coffee
& found the dawn came late.
I am filled with longing & rage.
I filled an ashtray & a page.
I checked unemployment
& unemployment never came.
I sewed a mask out of a bandana
& called through my friends
who live out of state.

I’m alone with the night again thinking
every union, every right: the ghost of a
failed general strike. The smoke laughs out
of me against the night: every union, every right:
the ghost of a failed general strike.
My father taught me how to play poker
next to the Murphy bed. After every deal, he said
“the pot is right.” Whose pot is right & why:
the ghost of a failed general strike.
In his metallic mauve Altima the Black &
Mild’s cut sharpie-sized holes in the
tan leather interior. Every cigarette,
every car: the ghost of a failed
general strike. His uncle kept a sawed
off in his jacket “to keep the scabs in line.”
Summer ‘59, nationwide steel strike.
Every empty steel mill I spelunked in
-- drunk & under age, every warehouse
empty like my pockets, every cavity
in this city’s foaming mouth, every
inch of the continued occupation of
this continent; the ghosts of a failed general strike,
teeth, leather, bricks in the pavement,
the river & its course, the speed
at which a car becomes criminal, the
color & quantity of my hair, the height
& weight of my father & uncles, the percentage
of the stars in the sky at night; the ghost
of a failed general strike.