by ML Woldman, Late Capitalism Correspondent
1.
katie sent me a picture of myself
from before we met.
she happened to film me at the 2011 Occupy Austin march on Bank of America.
i was a shaggy dandy—
a baby socialist
inveighing against the vampire squid of monopolizing capital.
2.
This was months before I lost everything and had a nervous breakdown
and went to san francisco to die…
or at least to lose myself
in a beautiful city that viewed me as the refuse i knew i was.
before this i was an ignorant diamond
hard and shiny
but i hadn’t learned to perfect my hatred
which roved around
haunting strangers and proletarians
3.
some time later i found myself awoken on the steps of a nob hill church by an irritated groundskeeper.
the sweet melancholy of dreaming washed into the sour melancholy of waking and I found an embarrassingly potent
bout of morning wood training its intentions on jesus.
4.
You’re technically not allowed to bring booze on trains
but this is not rigorously enforced.
bring a handle of evan williams on your next voyage and start pounding it in the morning on the observation car. this is how you make friends for the 2 days on the train. at the end everyone will exchange contact info and swear they’ll keep in touch. Pray they don’t keep in touch. it’s bad magick to try to make a dynamic relationship stationary.
5.
i never stopped screaming at Bank of America in my heart because it never stopped deserving my ire.
