love,
granad(a) collective

ii. granad(a) exists in darkness. capital brings the light that snuffs out the stars.

iii. granad(a) is a cigarette burning in a room full of explosive gas.

iv. we used to create our own light by the fireflies. we could light the paths with the lanterns of thousands. we traipsed through the fields singing songs and holding hands. the fireflies are confused and dying. their lanterns are weak. (see: the great bodies! JR, KW)

v. politics does not exist in nostalgia for a pastoral idyllic.

vi. granad(a) exists in the jars of jam that sit in boiling water. it is the jar that exploded in the root cellar, the unsealed jar that molded over winter.

vii. granad(a) can solve the blight that ate the potatoes, the tomatoes, the peppers. it is a victory garden of the soul.

what do you do all day? all night?
nothing.
you don’t read?
no. i pretend to
— anaïs nin

i. politics is not a granad(a) and whipped cream is not vegan.

ii. social war is not an excuse for whitefold indulgence.

iii. orgiastic asphyxiation cannot be poured out of a teacup of jameson.

iv. the grammar of militancy still does not allow for brand names and punkredentials.

v. plastic begets plastic. we support territorial pissing on antiquity now that the walled city has been breached.

vi. we’re tired of consuming flavored marxisms. tomorrow we return to selling condoms in san juan.

vii. mask up, motherfuckers. we can hear the kino sirens approaching.

We should not have any regrets as a movement… there is a new opportunity to build a mass movement against capital and the state. The contradictions are sharpening. Capitalism is becoming a tinderbox. Anarchists must now live up to our ideals. It’s time to set the world on fire. -Where there’s smoke…

they tell us that we should not yet have any regrets. yet we regret that the world we live in is not yet aflame. we are scattered spent Zippos and we are penguins that can not fly anymore. our wings have become flippers and we fear we are fast becoming extinct. we have waddled so far North so as not to hear the cries of the Global South. today, we keep our distance from humans lest they sneeze; lest we catch their apathetic malaise. we bail out banks but not our neighbours, even as we keep a w(e)ary eye on the loan sharks. they say that capitalism is crumbling and that it will be reformed into the new world we always dreamed of. where housing and healthcare and education will be affordable because the State has our backs. we reject reform. capitalism is a leopard seal that will never change its spots, and we can still feel its dorsal knife.

sometimes we wish we weren’t painted into suits, but our colonies have been colonised, with only liberal guilt left to be commodified. we will intervene to deliver you from your plights, even as we wonder if we shouldn’t be repairing our own communities first. on our frontlines, the privileged charge even as the vanguards divide our rear. in our midst, the provocaters, doubters and the informers ricochet, and we wonder just how much they have in common. sometimes we see the blurry tide of Movement approaching, but instead of struggling en masse we bellyflop into the fray alone. how then can we rise up? how soon will we set fire to the glacial walls of language?

y este cuerpo insurgente se rebela.

quememos las fronteras que nos oprimen. cada pared debe caer por el bien de nuestr@s hij@s y herman@s. toda américa es un pueblo multíplice, es un cuerpo en levantamiento permanente.

mi casa empieza en tierra del fuego y termina en nunavut. este continente insurgente se despierta lentamente, como cuando te levantas por la mañana. y en ojos oscuros nos encotramos las almas, en pieles morenas van nuestros caminos.

cruzan el rio en una llanta vieja. pueden ahogarse pero pasan segur@s. al pisar el otro lado l@ imagin@- desnud@, asustad@, muriendose de frio, mojad@. en la noche cargó sus tiliches, su cuerpo humano e ilegal, y caminó escondid@. en la noche fué, y aún ahora queremos llorar.

cada cuerpo que se viene al otro lado es otra razón por pelear, otro dolor que vengar, otra distancia que sobrevenir. cada cuerpo que nace en el otro lado es otro recuerdo que este lugar siempre fué nuestro, que la libertad no se pierde, que la rabia y la dignidad nunca mueren.

caminan los pueblos de américa por el desierto, siempre hemos sido gente del monte. esta es nuestra tierra, y anque nos sangren los pies con cada paso, aunque entierren sus sensores de presión por el paisaje nunca lo olvidaremos. este cuerpo es nuestro cuerpo, y si tenemos el pelo negro es por trabajar en la siega, por pezcar en la costa. escribimos en voces viejas que todavia recuerdan el principio del mundo.

l@s veo parad@s en las banquetas buscando trabajo o vendiendo elotes. le echan chile y entusiasmo, como si con sus ganas pudieran conquistar las calles que gritan represión desde cada esquina.

y no es que seamos imbéciles o cobardes, si en nuestros pueblos, ranchos y ciudades bien sabemos como levantar las calles con amig@s y vecin@s. pero aquí el gobierno es espanto en el aire- es espacio robado en el que vivimos, y parad@s en la banqueta es la revolución en un respiro. aquí seguimos y de aquí no nos vamos. suspiros a l@s niños de porqué resistimos, porqué aguantamos, porqué seguimos viv@s a pesar de todo, estas son nuestras demandas, lo demandamos todo. cuando la vida va prohibida, cada instante es rebeldía.

¡qué bellas son nuestras barricadas!

este país lo construimos nosotr@s- levantamos las paredes y pusimos el pavimento. limpiamos las casas y cocinamos la comida. pero nos roban el trabajo de nuestras manos ahora suaves ahora callosas, y nos roban los nombres de la boca, los espíritus de los altares, los amores de los ojos.

detonemos las bombas que son nuestras manos, pies, ojos, cabezas, vaginas, ombligos, manos, testículos, estómagos, bocas. prendámoles fuego a las carreteras que nos queman el alma. este cuerpo es semilla y raiz que levanta el concreto y desborona paredes. bajo la piel y los adoquines, la mar y la tierra.

¡que cálido el hogar migrante, carácol que anda lejos y acoje fuerte!

día tras día en la chamba o el quehacer o la escuela o en la asesina busqueda por la sobrevivencia. somos invisibles para el imperio, buscamos a la américa perdida, exiliad@s en nuestra misma tierra. somos nosotr@s américa. de pies a cabeza, contamos los cuentos de la esperanza de niñ@s y viej@s, narramos la geografía de un mundo nuevo.

y una vez al año nos vamos junt@s a las calles en este territorio ocupado, a reconocernos y vernos las caras en esta lucha de liberación, de cuerpos y de poblados. ese desierto que cruzamos, ese rio que vadeamos, se esconde en el corazón como nosotr@s nos escondemos en las grietas de un espacio roto y en los supuestos silencios de un discurso sin alma.

¡qué bueno es nuestro tiro al lanzar cócteles!

nos encontramos en la rabia del despojo que demonstramos en las avenidas del imperio, cuerpos fluidos desbocados. si callamos es porqué no solo con boca hablamos. el silencio del estado es nuestro estruendo rebelde, a gritos agarramos fuerzas, a besos reclamamos la vida.

¡que bonitas las voces de la radio pirata, voces de jovenes, estudiantes, madres y padres, trabajadora/es y guerriller@s!

este cuerpo ilegal es un cuerpo insurgente. este cuerpo mojado es un diluvio y una lluvia en el desierto. este cuerpo sin papeles es un ser sin miedo, ya que conozemos el terror de la vida diaria. navegamos las ciudades como piratas, conocemos el océano que se descaudaló del rio bravo- se nos metió cuando nos metimos a el, y al salir se quedó con nosotr@s. cerramos los ojos y se nos inunda el corazón. recordamos.

recordamos el cruze de nuestr@s madres y padres, nuestro proprio cruze. recordamos la angustia, el dolor, el peso de esa frontera mentida. a donde vayamos ese muro de sombras. a donde vayamos ese asesinato de voces. y nos nace la rabia como antigua amiga, compañera en la lucha, comandanta querida.

cuando queremos llorar y nos queman los ojos, el agua bendita se mezca con las lágrimas de la separación y el sudor del trabajo.

¡que orgullo me da mi pueblo, aquí y por donde quiera, que honor de ser parte de esta lucha larga, y con tales compañer@s!

en cada hij@, un/a guerriller@, no importa donde nazcan. esta supuesta frontera ya no vale nada, que desde hace mucho sangró nuestro continente estos cuerpos calientes y se pintó la tierra del color de nuestra piel. la milpa es donde crece el maiz, la casa nuestra es el suelo donde echamos raices, y con bebés y esperanzas plantamos el campo. ya brota este pueblo en las calles, niñ@s de ojos grandes y corazones continentales. somos gente de raices, guerriller@s que hacen monte.

pero primero hay que recordar, recordar a l@s muert@s, las batallas, los caminos que andamos para llegar aquí. primero hay que recordar, tierra y libertad, y luego levantarse por la mañana y por la noche, que el trabajo es pesado.

el futuro no se olvida. el presente no se acaba. la lucha sigue. este cuerpo insurgente, torturado y quemado, deshidratado, embarazado, hambriento, cansado. pero atente y rebelde, sangra y menstrua para encontrarse y nacer. nuestra existencia clandestina.

este cuerpo insurgente arde como un llano en llamas. el lodazal de nuestra labor no se manifiesta solo una vez al año- cada jornada vivimos el terremoto. este cuerpo insurgente sobrevivió la catástrofe y se levantó en la masacre, este cuerpo insurgente es digno y su patria no tiene nación. somos gente del monte y del pueblo, de la montaña y la costa. de donde venimos cada familia tiene sus mártires, cada migrante es revolucionari@ en hecho y potencia.

¡que poderoso el murmullo de l@s clandestin@s, que trae en sí el rugir del rio que rompe fronteras!

jóvenes, tenemos ya mas de quinientos años. va también nuestra vida prohibida, van también nuestros pasos callados. pero aún contamos los cuentos nuestros, inscribimos en las paredes los lemas e historias que sueñan los cuerpos.

viej@s, tienen ya el rubor de recién nacid@s. van también con cempasúchil fresco, van también con voces en alto. son como luna que ilumina el paso, en el desierto y en las calles del imperio que muere en cada instante libre. sus manos nuevas andan en la pizca, de poco a poquito reclamamos nuestra tierra. aprendemos en la labor lo que sabemos en el cuerpo.

¡que bonitos los corridos de la insurgencia que viene!

y es que este cuerpo insurgente es nuestro campamento guerrillero y milpa. y anda por los campos de algodón y tomate, en los huertos de naranjas, en los pasillos de las escuelas, en las oficinas, en los baños, en las calles, en el desierto, en el rio, en la montaña, en el corazón, en la palabra.

la lucha mas digna es la del cuerpo que se atreve a vivir.

“The State is a condition, a certain relationship among human beings, a mode of behavior, we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently toward one another… We are the State and continue to be the State until we have created the institutions ex-titutions that form a real community…”

-Landauer

we think we are still breathing. we think we are still breeding. we think we are still bleeding. all is well in the “free world”, then. but why do we feel as if underwater? each whisper amplified, each gesture met with watery friction. surely, it would be easier to just ride the wave.

we think we are still unconscious. can the Earth hear us? we muffle ourselves with technocapitalist abandon, with our TV dinners, with our false dreams, with our summits and Forums, with our theoretical summations, with our own bandannas. will Society hear us if we ping it once again?

Society is supine, sedentary, and starting to sneeze with the latest bout of NAFTA flu. yet still it sets its pigs on us. we do not need to build society, for it has built itself into the cubicles around us, into the neoimperial rubber bracelets around our wrists. like our unconscious bodies it flourishes as a parasitic bacterial fungus on those below, with a wink and a nod from the Left.

we ourselves are the State. our bodily unconscious is societal unconscious, which itself comes replete with its own pre-packaged forms and coercive structures and intricate scaffolding to hold it in place. in place of ribcages, arteries, and regulatory organs we instead have jails, hospitals and schools, interstate and information highways, and government. in place of the respiratory and endocrine systems we have capitalism and a Deleuzean society of control, still with constant monitoring and modulation.

psychoanalysis would tell us that we want to rape our mother. to plunder and to exploit, to mine flesh, to clear unsightly natural growth and to burn bush. sometimes the fires rage out of control. we are still in bed with Society, but it appears to have a catheter plunged up its nose. its post-coital promises are starting to sound hollow and we don’t quite like the leakage we’re seeing. was this ever even consensual? our hearts are still beating, but a little faster now.

we do not want to realise ourselves. we reject reality and demand the impossible. we demand more than the impossible: we demand this world. and we don’t demand it of Government or of Society or of Empire, but of ourselves. we do not want new institutions and we do not want to organise to disorganise. instead, the ex-titution which we do not build, but become. the unseamed black bloc, the rhiz(o)ne, the TAZ, the commune, the intensified multiplicity in which there is no i or you but only we.

we think Society is still breathing. we think Society is still breeding. now let’s start to make it bleed.

meownarchy >^-^<

purr purr ^_^

these days the cops put up more barricades than the black-clad. we are out by night and day to change this, with arms-in-arms if need be. we have seen the efficacy of well-punctuated trash cans, rocks, anything will serve the purposes of the purposeful.

fuck the past we say. off the sidewalks, into the future! but we know our stories and our legends- they live with us in the streets. the insurrectionary now is where we live: we expand it with open, screaming mouths that break the silence of hegemony, inhales the pepper spray and keeps on shouting. this now transcends repression and abandons erstatz freedoms. in the occupied street there is no longer room for cops or snitches, the past cannot oppress us, and we won’t wait for the future to come liberate us.

whose streets? our streets. whose time? our time. we might as well point out that we are not only traffic, we are the street itself. the space between buildings is a valley through which the flood flows, and though now it gathers in gullies, you can hear us rising.

we let go of nostalgia when our longing for days we never saw is replaced by the telling of the now, no punctuation save fists in the air and no chronometry but the stomp of legs and broken windows. this is the poetry of uprising, we write it on our city.

all speech pierces the future, each step advances the vanguard of desire actualized. what role, then, for the past? we are rather fond of ghosts, we must admit. who else understands our spectral forms, pressed against walls, embodying shadows and shady discourses? ghosts and revolutionaries are natural allies: manifestations of the impossible, spooks against the disembodied abstractions of Totality.

the past then, is now coextant with the future- an original no-place of legend (we come from the future, after all). we abolished time yesterday, so we can herald nothing but the immediate now. it is the urgency of our bodies, the instant of a heartbeat. the march is the occupation of the streets, the actualization and the language of real life- the poetics of resistance. the march is an explosion of sound against the silence of domination; it is the creation of a void.

this void punctures the simulacrum of the pavé and propels us to escalate the situation. this void is the eyehole that ruptures the panopticon; through it we see ourselves. leaving this void, we occupy again, again, and again, creating our own space out of the collapsed image of the old.

we walk the streets of our city, and so we create our city. slowly we make our way, walking and talking. soon, we hear the echoes of our comrades, a rage of words that assault the walls of the spectacle and shatter them like screens. our hands are busy populating the space above us with fists, so we craft transgression with our soft-soled feet. a single step past the barricades brings the deluge.

“[desire] is not a demand, it is a war cry.”

with no marching orders but this burning, we’ll bring this city down. flames are the children of night. we are also their herald, hermeneutic shadows.

in the chain reaction of recognition, the shared physicality of bodies occupying space, of linked selves thrown into streets turns into the fuel of insurrection. we are the manifestation and the streets; what goes up must come down, and it is we ourselves who burn.

the plurality of our footsteps is the catastrophe of power. chants are incantations that call out the dead but living. behind these masks are insurgent spirits. there is a magic to the rhythm of the masses; our chthonic chants at once memories and dreams of other worlds. we haunt so we may dream. we dream so we may act.

¡tomemos las calles, camaradas, que al dar el primer paso somos ya libres!

in zapatista territory, we thought that the people were calm. really, they were just always certain of impending attack. still and ready, swinging legs back and forth over the edge of the precipice, they told us stories. the fog moved in quickly, and we had to move in closer to see each other’s faces. once a conversation was stopped by the sound of a helicopter. Sandra, our teacher, jerked her head towards the sky but could not find anything behind the clouds. the children playing in groups on the grass scattered in all different directions, silently, as if starting just another game of hide and seek. but they were all hiding. The noise moved away, and Sandra’s head lowered to where we could see her eyes. The conversation continued as her hands trembled.

revolution is violence in time and space. a rupture made sensible by linearity held as axiom, it re-asserts the inevitability of time as both ours and the Earths. what has happened will happen again, differently. in Tzotzil, Sa K’op means revolution: the word that revolves, mixes up, scrambles. a word that, in uttering itself, opens and splinters infinitely into constellations of multiple meanings. how, then, to use the language that we have now to speak of it?

II. think global, act local. think local, act global. think glocal. actually stop that, stop thinking. static on the radio, silence in the clearing, drums in our hearts and whirring in the wings. the stage is set now. the script supervisors are ready at stage left and your scenery painters have done a grand old job. we’re tired of wallpapering our bathrooms with yesterday’s stories and we think you missed a spot. over there, right here, the boards are wearing thin.

III. when our mothers came to visit us they were sad to learn that CATS had ended and settled for the humanitarian spectacle instead. we walked around Times Square taking pictures of the tourists and they took pictures of us and sometimes our flashes met each other and in the moment we were doubly erased. neoliberalism has had the longest run and we await its newest revival. the directors await their accolades and freshly imported hothouse flowers. we think it’s time they take their last curtain call.

IV. we can not be Nepal and we do not want to be Bulgaria; should we be Strasbourg? our mouths are full with the rotting corpse of the anti-globalisation movement, yet still we mobilise, mobilise, mobilise. the air will be redolent with the stench of bleeding liberals, c(o)pitalist cannisters and the inquietudinal shadow of yesterday. the media will descend like vultures, bloodthirsty and cawing for the best shot. from within us, maggots will arise like worms from the soil after the rain. to critique, to criticise, to analyse, and worst of all to advise. where were they at the casting call for the insurrection?

III. a welcome hand from the air at a punk show. the State’s unwelcome fingers always probing, prying, reaching, grasping. your arms extended across the Atlantic and the scraps of commodified guilt in your hesitant fist. our fists in the air, our arms woven together, linking us as we work to delink ourselves.

VI. acronyms and excuses and tactics and theories . fetishising the bloc, my bloc, my politics, my picture. my call, your call, their call, whose anti-authoritarian brandname? polite applause. multiplicitous invisibility, duplicitous action, organising new structures to disorganise the old. cutting off the lines of flight that make us look untidy. plans and praxis not potentialities. we’re tired of breathing air burnt with atomised tears and deconstructed apologies. revolutionary asphyxiation.

VII. they called us back and we made it to the next round. our headshots our mugshots, with a thousand bandannas slid into place. in the bloc we are incorporeal; not one but many. our lives had enrolled us in classes of ballroom dancing. we learned to waltz when the path seemed clear, and to sidestep any problems with delicate finesse. tomorrow will begin our greatest dance yet, of decadence, dechoreography, detournement and delinking. costumed, we are unified and dignified in our decapitalist masquerade. yet who are we fooling?