Anarcho-Syndacalist by Robin Dunn

When I came inside I knew that it was time to do it, my arms tingling, and my stomach filled with a slow pressure.  Although I always hesitate, and was doing so now as well, curling my head onto my shoulder while I picked a fleck of sleep out of my left eye, I knew somehow that resolution had found me even if I had not found it, that it was now.

I walked into the kiln room and hit my mother over the head with the iron bar I had found under the oven last month, and she barely made a sound as she went down; I had hit hard enough.

The blood was the right color;  I knew I had done it.  I did feel sick, but it was okay too.

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about transgression.  But the trans part is important, the across part, like an unstable international border, through which you’re unlikely to pass again.

Now you’re in country.

In country in the fire.

I am an American man but my heritage is my own;  I abhor medals and honorariums;  I despise censuses and absolution.  I know I am damned and I will choose the manner of it.

I am Anarcho-Syndicalist.  In the moving of my body towards your future, all your own, I write this my confession and I write to you, brother, to remind me all that could have been ours.

Brother, do your hands still tremble as mine do?  I am coming.

– –

I stay up with the dawn to watch the explosions.  Risky, but I do it.

Indescribable, and I will act in accord, indescribably, my monkey on fat, my heart on glad but low and folded in my hat, the watchword uncountable uncounted unremembered forgot, all the lessons useless but remembered still, the schooling, the schooling in the dark, in the long and luxurious darks of houses . . .

I wait for it.  And when it comes, I fear for my family.

– –

I wield for you a thousand star cities, ten thousand.

I wield for you the night, and the night after the night, and the night after the night after the night you folded.

I walk in the night and so do you, brother, so do you:

Let us come together and let us be arranged, as I shall say for you:

And if not, then as you say, for this is fire, this is fire, brother,

This is fire that we are bringing.

Fire and fire, and fire, and fire, and fire, brother, O fire brother.

Ten thousand fires, and a hundred thousand.  Stars, stars in the dark —

Each one of us an ocean of urgency, each one of us desperate for the word, for the word go, so ready and set, O brother, O brother ready and set to you.

I hold the starter’s gun, brother.

Not for god and country.  Not for the flag.

Go —

© 2014 Robin Dunn

Robin Dunn lives in The Town of the Queen of the Angels, El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles, in Echo Park.  He is 33 years old.  You can find him at www.robindunn.com

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