Weekly Claims

don’t say “these are the steps I’ve taken to find work” say fuck the police
- Sean Bonney

(March 17, 2020- April 26 2020)

34
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.

35
The night before they closed
the restaurants me & some
servers & a line cook stood
watching the dining room fill
with petit bourgeois patrons
who styled their eating
as charity/ their wild gluttony/
as generosity/ their drunkenness
as good citizenship while we
looked on from the kitchen
saying “these people are killing
us & they’re proud of it.”

36
There were jokes or rumors for
a while 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”.

37
People are joking on the internet
about yearning & being horny
& missing fucking & dating &
falling in love but all it looks like
is a deep desire for collectivity
in our already atomized lives;
Britney Spears called for a
general strike & I almost believed
her.

38
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:

this has always been my relation
to this work: a desperation
for reimagining the context
of my life as fluid
or malleable to a larger
power of masses

so again out of this desperation

I am trying to make poems

39
All of this flirting feels like
surveillance. The calendar
is down for maintenance.
Tomorrow is an exit.
All payments have been delayed
until the crisis has abated.
We hope into everything
inanimate that there is a
ghost somewhere that will
animate it, praying for
possessions--
our new past time.

The other night the blizzard

silenced everything with
teeth. The next day we made
angels in the street.
Today the calendar has been
suspended. In this suspension
there is only longing & peanut
butter cups. Ashtrays filling
themselves-- I’m talking automation!
-- & the sky putting itself to sleep
far too early. I’m sorry to hear
that the political economy has
collapsed insofar as I believe
it hadn’t already in stages
everywhere else-- I’m telling
you there is nowhere you
can tell me to go.

40
At the grocery store everyone
had masks on & there were ten
cops at the door & no toilet
paper & no meat. Maybe we
should eat the cops or wipe
our asses with them.

41
Strikes are rising in the grocery
stores & fast food restaurants
that remain open. Riots where
the cops are killing people
in the streets. There were
mass prison breaks in Italy
& Brazil, preemptive release
in Iran, preemptive release
throughout the jails here.
Rent strikes have organized
& the houseless, already
expropriating houses, have
picked up speed. The restaurant workers
in Cleveland are whispering
across the internet. The restaurants
are giving away all their food.
We’ve got our matchbox
we just need to strike the match.

42
Do you remember slathering yourself
in extractivist skincare under the fluorescent
sounds of production value? It was like
a sickly dream becoming lava lamp slick
for the perfect circus. Do you remember
buying flowers? It was like we didn’t know
where to take them from for free. Do you
remember the faucet the water would flower
from? The days the news broke like our
bank accounts over & over until the channels
were overwhelmed with sulfur & polyurethane
sounds & the vague sense of wonder at their
insolence?

43
In the great shuttering
I am exactly myself
which is dangerously
not enough.

44
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.

45
I’ve given up on defeating insomnia
& have come to understand it’s a great
way to commune with friends in different
time zones. Years count as time zones

to the innumerate like me. I’ve come to

believe loitering is the most radical act,
the prelude to riot, the epigraph
before rupture.

I’m loitering in the long hallways of my

memory, hoping to change what
has already come to be.

The winter this year is a warning

of what has come to pass
everywhere else. Presently, the past changes.
The snow melts mid-March.

The city loiters in the long hallways

of its memory, hoping to change what
it has already come to be.

46
The cora vinca violets burst
up from under the Fir tree
in the lot, where the leaves weren’t
raked & the grass wasn’t cut & the
snow wasn’t shoveled. Seems
relevant.

47
I hate the morning;
its assault of birdsong
& daylight. Its conspiracy
of revealed objects.

Everything is suddenly there:

Coffee & cigarette landscape does somersaults

in my head. Gre(a)y day sky flat, imperial cloud
cover rhymes with sidewalk. Snow shot through
with salt pockmarks, plots of land execute.

The predawn’s elongating oranges. Birds ballooning

by the feeder. Snow shovel artillery. I spend plenty
of night interrogating my phone, my phone tells me
nothing. I am in love with no one. Conditions are perfect.

48
Yesterday the state
suspended mortgages.
Today I learned how to spell it.
Tomorrow

etc.

Everything is contained in etceteras now

all words are buried there the working
conditions of a billion people
are buried there how can you hide
a country in an etcetera wait
& see I am stuck in the etcetera
of the economy it’s an industry
it’s a restaurant it’s this city
yawning at its
piling dead as the skyscrapers
run out of sky to scrape.

49
You are either held hostage at work
or you are held hostage where you sleep.

These are the classes now. Lumpen/

proletariat can not describe.

50 million unemployed & we still

cannot name the flame that swallows us.

A universal solitudinalizing. A thing even

the anti-word neoliberal cannot stretch far

enough to encompass.
We are again outside of language

begging the alphabet of capital

for answers to our predicaments.

We can go fuck ourselves

& no one else.

50
I am glad to say the prime minister
is in intensive care I am glad to say
the night will not end I am glad to say
my workplace may not survive the crisis
tho the liquidity is infinite & the benefit
lines are jammed with the deranged
survivalist spirit forgive me for
making fun of preppers forgive me
for roasting the commune

51
forgive me for
there are sirens all over
New York

I text my ex
I am with you wherever you are
I meant it sweetly but now I’m not so sure

the internet is full of distress, disaster

& desire leaning on one another
it is the struggle

I am trying to tell you

when this is over it will never be over

we can’t let it be over
this is the closest we’ve come in
centuries

say centuries
that’s a laugh

52
Unemployment
is phone zapping itself
People die but debt & law can’t.
Spooky shit! I’m considering
renting an apartment like how
when I was a kid
I considered becoming
an astronaut.

53
These days I don’t shower
I just stand in the hot water
& pretend it is intimacy.
This is privilege; intimacy,
hot water. The long empty day
without any news, the coffee,
the smoke, the longing, the
terror.

54
my boss got a forgiveness
loan to pay their rent

my friends’ work duties

have not been forgiven

they are at the mercy

of worsening working conditions

an expanding delusion
that anyone else controls

the workplace has started

to thankfully contract we

are in the meanwhile the

as it happens the concurrently

watching too much

I will no longer watch

last night I used to say

last night & then record

it I am trying to abolish
last night & work through

today which is about ashtrays

& unemployment & either

going back to work

& getting

sick or getting sick from home

which is the new working from home

55
If they send us back to work
how do I forgive myself
for going. If they send us
back. If it opens up. The
sky has opened up it’s
trying to tell us something
fucking spring again go away
this is all so much easier in
winter fuck ashberry always
telling us it’s spring always
such delusional surprise
jennifer chang was right
fuck those daffodils
jamie seems to think
this is all desire & domination
& i think she’s always right

56
I can see the through line
& would like to forget it
it’s not helping it’s
just earning me more
pension credits for
a job I’ll never have

the union contract taught me that

any management action can be
grieved from any time or place

57
between grief & grievance; grieve

when economists see a recession they hope for a v

the stages of grief also form a v

denial anger bargaining depression acceptance

depression & acceptance on the other side

yea tho I walk through the valley of the shadow of death

I am saying do not bargain do not accept

grieve

58
I’m high again & the walls are white.

The street lights keep on

their brights. I pretend to know

day from night. I pretend to

fight. I write & am wrong to write.

lightning strikes
barely a tree in sight

doesn’t tremble there is no

thunder tonight there is only

lightning if the thunder is the second

hand that strikes through the silence

to tell you that the time is changing

there is no second hand there is

no more thunder the sky

is only lightning

59
it’s been a decade
like a double shift
the sun is a stranger
to me I do not know her

time is a scrambled channel

I peer into to catch some details
I’ve become an expert
on the particulars of
my kitchen table

in the machine glow

of the light box
I watch the world’s
thoughts blink off

I wonder if there is
a struggle to still
have that has not
been suffocated
by this

60
nothing is dead

I have heard more voices than

I’d thought were still living

in the tinny tone of my smartphone

bickering & reimagining the

context of struggle I cannot

be anything but hope as this

empire of ashtrays further

incinerates, its disappearing hand

out
can I hold you

I used to think a century

was long like I thought a hundred

dollars was a lot. I take comfort

in how wrong I’ve been.

61
Wow that blue jay is just

devastating. Before it

was like this it was also

like this. I think I’m tinkering

around the edges of a lot

of more important stuff

when I say I would like

to be held. This is all

another way of filing

my weekly claim, saying

look, I deserve to live

too.

62
Desire might not be enough to
overthrow the political economy
I’m sorry. Mean looking hot people
in leather might not be enough either
& for this I am truly sorry.

A good joke won’t do & not these poems

not even close, these are just rubbings
on a tombstone that’s still being etched.

I want you to know that when I wanted

the revolution to happen & organized
I was also a horny hungry lonely
still living animal. I liked to watch
the birds feed.

I read another essay about this

phenomena I experienced the
first time I got laid off in 2018:
for the first time in a decade
I could remember my dreams.

63
The workplace & unemployment compensation
are different sides of the same grave.

64
The picket will try to hold you
like the rope the horse is tethered
to. If it runs it can take countries
& centuries. That’s when the
weeks turn into decades. Between rot
& right is riot. The dead in their
graves have no rights. Just rot.
The grave knows us.Fuck the dead
picket, its parade of skeletons
picked clean begging for kinder
worms. Fuck the weekly claims
“I am a good dead boy holding
nothing but an empty hand,
please Mister Governor can I
have mine.” No. This is all that
there is:

strike where you work

&
riot where you buy

riot the joy the overcoming

boycott which of our

enemies will we make infamous

wage the battle that has been promised

purchase where we have power

& where power has been exerted
over us

65
the newscasters have masked up
it’s gonna be a really great
depression. they’ve got no
clue as to how to get us out.

66
Before, I would eat off of anybody’s plate
in the dishpit starving & hated for such

brazenness. I’d wash my hands so

many times a shift that the space between

my knuckles would turn into little spiderwebs

of dead skin. Hygiene in the restaurant was a stage

whisper. Now I wash only my hands &

the groceries. Whoever cleans a place knows

its ghosts & becomes them. The unemployment

office is telling me I didn’t earn those

unreported tips. I didn’t earn those plates

I ate off of either I just took them & hid, hated & ate.

67
the world, another party I am

not attending, goes quiet

except the sirens.
The night, like a hammer
claw in the back of my
skull, like a tow hitch
into the front of my car,
beckons & calls.

To end this impulse,

to end the internal scrawl.

what this haunts & holds onto

& abolishes & exalts

what it wants & what it wants

& what I want & what I want

to fear desire & its gears

& know it betrays when
I adhere

To dissolve this thrall

I unhooked my devil jaw
& swallowed every vowel

of corn & husk & car exhaust

which grows across us in the sprawl

& spit it back out rearranged

in every ashtray & every page
in every passage & every claim
& still desire is the same

68