Author: Eden Bloom

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The Crust and the Glitch

This is the beginning of the never ever, the once and…, the once over.  The jumping off point, from here to where?  When?  Now!  Go!

The crossover between being thankful you’re not at the wheel and realizing you’re tied up and you’re in the trunk.

This is the start of a poem I finished when I was 16.  It attempts to explain:

This is the crust of acid sexuality, this is my death.

The ultraviolence, the end of science, blinding with fundamental flaws. Assumptions.

The ever-lasting vices, lies and lysergic, luminous, laughing and cracked.

Let me tell you about my mother and father. The prince and the pauper. The chosen blood, hardened, raping, mixing with her unclean.

      I am produced. 

You’ll know why you don’t have to tell me this is a class war. You’ll never need to convince me this is about toxic male white supremacy.

My fingers move and tap when I think in time.

I may even up the ante with my ‘capitalism is a botched attempt to domesticate the human animal’ shtick. 

The excess of me, us, we, stains on car cushions, splattered across hotel room walls, smashed up against bathhouse mirrored glass.

The pudding’s proof, left out, sour, molding, bitter and I bit back. Sacrilege, aghora, anathema, counter attack.

It’s on repeat in the other room if you want to go watch. I think I’m still tied to the bed, it’s a real horror show, it’s a mess. 

© EDEN BLOOM 2023

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I’ve been watching you and yours for years

Get it straight
I’m a gun for hire
I’m NOT an activist
 
They say I’m an organizer, whatever
I’m just using skills picked up along the way
to try to help some folk and get my next check.
 
I’ve monetized my anger
I’m not a do-gooder
A ne’er-do-well trying to keep my family fed
It keeps me honest and on point
 
Say what you will about me
I’m just doing my J O B
but If you treat the people
I work for and with poorly
You go on my shit list eternally
 
And I’m down with restoration,
for second chances, even again and again
But I’ve been watching you and yours for years
documenting your disregard
for people with whom you disagree
party politic has trumped your humanity.
 
When you rep as a white guy and you attack other people
without respect, without explanation, just self-important certainty
is it so unimaginable that some call it white supremacy?
©EschatonLife
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As goes Detroit, so goes the World


As goes Detroit, so goes the world. It’s a portal for global transformation, but not the way you’ve heard of or will.

It’s a unique node on the construct, a place where the water turns, where crystals churn underneath, where the blood in the river’s still heard.

And the people struggle on and on against hundreds of years of white folk, friend and foe, their systems set on control.

It’s where the other possible world is just another already given away. “Judas!” they say, but even they are military, industrial and complex.

New parties for new workers, re-imagined compliance, makers spaced, DIY cookie-cutter semantics and first-time-stoned philosophies toward a more humane inhumanity, a more just injustice. 

Propped up by credentialed dinosaurs shitting corpses, calling gold.  Lapped up and lauded by legacy-read and lineage-bread minions, gilded and rearing to go.  Offspring of infiltration, intergenerational co-intel pro-fessionals.

As goes Detroit, so goes the world. A portal for global transformation, but not the way you’ve heard of or will.

A unique node on the construct, a place where the water turns, where crystals churn underneath and the blood in the river’s still heard.

And the people struggle on and on against foe and friend, trying to compress and contain what constant, breaks out of their grasp, another possible world that they cannot control. 

© EschatonLife

This piece is included in Eden Bloom Eschaton Life

 

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Turn the water back on, make it safe, cancel the debt and make it affordable.

These have been the calls from many of those on the frontline of the water wars in the Great Lakes; just turn the water back on, make it safe, cancel the debt, and establish an affordability plan for low- and no-income people going forward. These calls, coming from Detroit, Flint and other cities has been heard across the world, even by the UN[i], but has not been heeded on by those with the power to make change.

Now that we are in a pandemic, we’ve all learned more about public health and how we’re all connected. Now people are suddenly hearing the call differently. Now those in power are taking action to address the impending threats of this crisis. But are the changes being made disingenuous?

Two weeks ago, in response to the impending crisis and a Joe Biden rally in Detroit, Mayor Duggan announced a program to restore water service. The state of Michigan plans to cover the $25 reconnection fee and service would be a flat rate of $25 a month through the crisis.

While it is vital that our families have access to water to wash their hands, it turns out that this program also forces residents into a plan that demands payment when the crisis is over. To get turned back on many are being made more vulnerable to past debt with no water affordability plan to keep them connected.

While it is necessary to cut checks and provide resources for those who’ve lost work and been impacted it is also vital that we immediately make systemic changes. The good news is that the people who have been pushing against this for years have also been working hard to make a strong case to do this differently. All the research has been done and real affordability plans exist that can be adopted. The resources and existing contracts for shut offs can be reallocated to turn-ons and vital infrastructure repair for safety.

These actions, and other efforts to reverse inhumane policy will greatly reduce stress on public health in Detroit, throughout the region and across state. These actions will increase the health and resilience of all people while making sure that those in poverty do not disproportionately suffer and take the brunt of this crisis. This is reasonable, logical, scientifically sound, economically responsible and humane.

Please immediately contact Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and other decision makers across the state to demand that they take action to turn the water back on, make it safe, forgive the debt, and establish an affordability plan for low and no-income people going forward.

Sign the Petition

More:
We The People of Detroit https://www.wethepeopleofdetroit.com

#TurnWaterOn
#KeepWaterOn
#MakeWaterAffordable

[i] https://www.michiganradio.org/post/un-team-says-detroit-water-shutoff-program-violates-human-rights

 

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The Lights Flickering, Vichy Detroit


The lights flickered again and we laughed about it.  I wondered if they were flickering up the street at the house.  The kids wouldn’t notice in the unabashed chaotic joy of a sitter.

Our kids were, for the most part, unaware of the war or the occupation.  Of course, they seemed more aware of it than the majority of the grown folk sitting round us.  The lights flickered again but Badu didn’t skip a beat. Another high end restaurant, a facade, built on a failing infrastructure. Flooded basements.

For me, a great deal of it can be traced back to Horselover Fat.  While my contemporaries were jacking off to Ayn Rand, I was reading VALIS and running needles through my flesh to feel something, anything.

The Empire Never Ended. 

Fat, through divine chance and laser beams began to see Roman facades superimposed on Southern California streets.  For me it’s Vichy France, fascist occupation, that I see strewn out through the city of Detroit.  The strategic expansion of Vichy shops, Vichy restaurants, and the shutting off of water to Black women and children.  Buckets to the river.

My wife’s eyes were lit up, she was glowing, the wine coming on as we talked.  Only special occasions would bring us to a place like this in times like these.  I was attentive to her but also tuned into the energetic and aethyric flow.  Gazing throughout the room I thought I saw a Robber Barron, one of the  wealthy Nazi collaborators at the bar.  The lights flickered again. I glanced at my wife and laughed, looked back and he was gone.

© EschatonLife

This piece is included in Eden Bloom Eschaton Life

 

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A Clarificational

Manifesto read roughly, falling into sleep, waking to more blood. As usual, this isn’t a confessional, it’s a clarificational, clarity to combat manifestos.

I have absolutely no idea what I am doing here, I mean, I don’t and I do. 

I’m not getting older I’m getting thinner,
stretched out on the horizon before and behind.

There is intent and there are side effects, they blur together as they move into the distance.

Spiraling out in a paradigm shift, I’ve destroyed the servitors made to bring me out and protect me. 

I do not have the resources to get out and, as discipline demands I’ve burned all the bridges behind me. 

I am a rock, an island landlocked and no manner of song, spell or poem will unbind.

I’m not getting older I’m getting thinner, stretched out on the horizon before and behind.  

I now have passengers in my care, marked like me 23, that I’ve landed here at the end, toward what end?

I can’t find the combination of gestures, the code or the gods-damned door to get us out of the way.

I have erected the corners in line with the stars that I still know how to find. I light the fires on what I think are the right nights, and I wait, and they grow. 

Then there is that matter of time, it’s not speeding up, it’s lengthening. 

I’m not getting older I’m getting thinner, stretched out on the horizon before and behind. 

Then there is the awareness, while I am an island to the human race, I expand in other realms beyond my kind, my eyes. 

The wild dogs, the hawks, rats and the bacteria puddled in the street, Oh! the land and Oh! the dead, they talk to me.

©EschatonLife

This piece is included in Eden Bloom  Eschaton Life

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Blood Money

Don’t worry old fam, I’m not coming to the funeral. I’m not looking for a payday and won’t be coming round to collect a dime.

I’ve spent my life trying to do it without your blood money, struggling so I wouldn’t be in further debt to the man who brought me into this world and tried to take me out.

This will be the 3rd inheritance paycheck I’ve not cashed or avoided. I’m sure they’ll start a scholarship in my name, I mean his name, or something like that instead.

© EschatonLife

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Every morning I wake before dawn

Every morning I wake before dawn to brush away the demons and angels that have accumulated through the night, the ones that follow in my wake, my albatross, my mutated cross. 

Broken oaths, bad blood, blood bonds and divine protections, wanted and unwanted, some intentional, some still unseen, but all felt daily, and not only by me. 

So in darkness or twilight, without malice, but maybe with a slight post-penance regret, I sweep out the cobwebs and push them back at bey and clear the way for the coming day. 

Even so and as I do, they’ll regroup and re-approach while waging their battle over my soul and my deeds, one side bound to protect, another sworn on blood to destroy. 

And they do, and though I sway with the battle, these days I’m able to maintain and wake early in the morning, clear out the dead and those hiding.

Say the words, draw the signs, make the gestures the ghosts and the land taught me and clear the way for another day in this contested space, this place where the river turns.

© EschatonLife

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Sitting this one out

Very thoughtful morning. Lots of impressions of my parents. Our parents are often the gatekeepers of our ancestors and filter the ancestor’s manifestation.

The way in which people, particularly but not exclusively white people, internalize and interpret equity and equality is making me itchy this week.

I’ve been through numerous anti racism trainings of rather varied quality for the last 10 years. It’s been a few years since the last one so I’m sure Mama Lila will call and I’ll find myself in another soon. For me it’s an expected aspect of living in a majority-Black city and working for Black women lead organizations.

I not only need to have an awareness of black history, but also must consider and have a deeper understanding of my history and how I’m placed in the present moment. While I have arrived here under duress, my approach has not lacked strategy or intention.

Let’s start with a few definitions. Equality and equity share the same root, but the blurring of subtleties between them seems to trip well intentioned people up and replicate inequities rather than resolve them.

Equality is what we could have on a level playing field, one without the towers and quarries of oppression. Equity is about everyone getting what is needed to create equality or to level the playing field.

One of the important subtitles lost is here is that, in order to level the field people living in the hills, those who have access to resources and are all set, are not entitled to further benefits or an equal stake.

It is in fact possible that in order to archive any semblance of equity, individuals and groups with amassed power may have to sit out for a few turns at the table or possibly even make sacrifices to the tune of redistribution.

© EschatonLife

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Hungry Ghosts


I’m the last caretaker of a few hungry ghosts; they may be ancestral, or I somehow, at some point, drew their attention as a host.

A confederate solider, a rapist, an unrighteous thief. There have been others, though their time in my care more brief.

My goal is to not pass them on, the mission, to take them home with me.
Out past the campfires, at the edge of the infinite, returning to the endless We.

© EschatonLife