Leopard Again

Peering into scents

Gossamer wisps 

Snapping in the wind

Encircling each other

Pirouetting in the flicker

These contaminants

Made me too wolfish

I will always catch you

When you are weak

I will always howl

At the moon’s light

Even when 

I become a 

Leopard again

Walking Sticks

Our subconscious bristles of sabotage, ankles deep in the tar pits

This media detritus smothering us terribly, as this humidity does

Cultural hypnosis, everywhere we look, on the loci, we lose focus

Never touch the subway pole, cause its covered in mania and regret

Hand sanitizer; don’t ever, take the crazy off our hands, so stop smearing it

All these, drugged eyes, peering past us, into a faraway-faux-land-in-the-background

Been to every crevice in our minds, every new advance, a new way to waste time

Satisfied, with a lick of the affluence, at least we can smell the cornucopia

The road seldom traveled, is filled with hitchhikers, with walking sticks

Food prices skyrocketing, trying to water our optimism with drool

Why build the passages, traveled by only the mute fools of conceit

Clasped in the Paw of a Future Rat

I remember that I have

always been good at finding these

Large crowds, which march

with banner and hands aloft

I always find life in the chants

Defiance was my first toy

Lately, everything is poison,

which I find leaves little to desire

Everything tastes

like this 

quiet and silent death

My pillow is a ventriloquist

for almost dead people

Or at least an evil fuck

What about the living things,

which can’t find me

within this concrete and steel?

I stand, as usual,

on the other side of the valley,

just out of earshot of my totem

Where I am one of the

self-appointed rangers

of the urban sprawl

Lean on the illusionary walls

My tool belt is,

well worn and faded

With dry spatter

of everyone's blood

While feeling this weariness

of assisting in the erection 

of these complex conduits

Among the diligence

of maintenance of the foundation

I found our future

clasped in the paws of

the city rats

Which, when I unrolled,

each said, nothing memorable

Only a time capsuled narcissism

of egotistical nostalgia

Each had a detailed picture

drawn of a 

empty face

With the underlined word

"ME"

scrawled in pencil underneath

When driving pillars

for the next corridor

I met a future rat

Who had a encrypted note

in his paw that I 

can't read, but at least

I know in the future

There are still rats

who use the channels

We built by our hands

Surplus Coercion

It wriggles under my skin, all these tiny parasites

Searching for comfort, as if, it were a panacea

Some sort of delusion, which bores deeper yet

I lose myself daily, usually when I set the alarm clock

For an hour in the future to trick myself again

Squeezing the surplus of my labor much tighter then they

Making me less of a fool, then my altruism does

How many layers of false consciousness cradle the real?

Forsaken into the happy of consent as coercion embraces

Apolitical Intellectuals

Apolitical Intellectuals

One day
the apolitical
intellectuals
of my country
will be interrogated
by the simplest
of our people.

They will be asked
what they did
when their nation died out
slowly,
like a sweet fire
small and alone.

No one will ask them
about their dress,
their long siestas
after lunch,
no one will want to know
about their sterile combats
with "the idea
of the nothing"
no one will care about
their higher financial learning.

They won't be questioned
on Greek mythology,
or regarding their self-disgust
when someone within them
begins to die
the coward's death.

They'll be asked nothing
about their absurd
justifications,
born in the shadow
of the total lie.

On that day
the simple men will come.

Those who had no place
in the books and poems
of the apolitical intellectuals,
but daily delivered
their bread and milk,
their tortillas and eggs,
those who drove their cars,
who cared for their dogs and gardens
and worked for them,
and they'll ask:

"What did you do when the poor
suffered, when tenderness
and life
burned out of them?"

Apolitical intellectuals
of my sweet country,
you will not be able to answer.

A vulture of silence
will eat your gut.

Your own misery
will pick at your soul.

And you will be mute in your shame.

--Otto Rene Castillo

To Those Born After

To Those Born After
I

To the cities I came in a time of disorder 
That was ruled by hunger. 
I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar 
And then I joined in their rebellion. 
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth. 

I ate my dinners between the battles, 
I lay down to sleep among the murderers, 
I didn't care for much for love 
And for nature's beauties I had little patience. 
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth. 

The city streets all led to foul swamps in my time, 
My speech betrayed me to the butchers. 
I could do only little 
But without me those that ruled could not sleep so easily:
That's what I hoped. 
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth. 

Our forces were slight and small, 
Our goal lay in the far distance 
Clearly in our sights, 
If for me myself beyond my reaching. 
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth. 

II

You who will come to the surface 
From the flood that's overwhelmed us and drowned us all 
Must think, when you speak of our weakness in times of darkness 
That you've not had to face:

Days when we were used to changing countries 
More often than shoes, 
Through the war of the classes despairing 
That there was only injustice and no outrage.

Even so we realised 
Hatred of oppression still distorts the features, 
Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly. 
Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness, 
Could never be friendly ourselves.

And in the future when no longer 
Do human beings still treat themselves as animals, 
Look back on us with indulgence. 


~Brecht

Electric Wire Hustle "Again"

Electric Wire Hustle "Again" from Foxtree Studio on Vimeo.

Directed by Vibol Moeung

Produced by Vibol Moeung and David "Taay Ninnh" Wright

Filmed and Edited by Vibol Moeung

Graphic Design by David "Taay Ninnh" Wright

"Again" features on Electric Wire Hustle's self titled album
out now on BBE.

Ship of Despondency

Misplaced in this land

Garbed in our quintessence

In a space where

Everyone has

Too many names

An opulent place where

No one loves themselves

And everyone

Expects we know them

By their riddles and denigrations

Or perhaps their caprices

Merely, in the quickening

When all ships are adrift

Will one heed the

Hearing of their only name

Called out in despondency

Scarves for People Under the Sun

My words, 

are stitched into.

Each other, 

to make images.

However, you.

Do not understand, 

and like, words.

So, my depictions are mislaid.

All the needlework and toil.

From my fingertips.

Lay, mottled and wasting.

Alas, I continue, 

to weave thick scarves.

For the people, 

living under the sun.

Fallen, But Found

It is within our eyes,
where the people gather
Irises filled up with oppression and loss
Together we sit, and we remember
through our collective memories
Our pupils, a pathway to Osiris
Which leads to the hidden bones, 
Of the disappeared peoples
Who were our revolutionaries