ARMED CELL 12

ARMED CELL 12 SHANE BOOK

ALL OF THE THINGS UTILLIAN 720 MURDERIZED BORDER

ZACK HABER

from HORRIBLE PLACES

DANIELLE LAFRANCE MICHAEL LEONG EMJI SPERO

I MIGHT DIE BEFORE I LIKE IT from DISORIENTATIONS FREEWAY STATEMENT

CALEB BECKWITH THEY LIVE ACCELERATIONIST RENAISSANCE DIALECTICIANS COUNTER-HEGEMONIC DYSPHORIA MUTUAL AID BLACK BLOC IN THE NATION OR, THE MATERIALISTS NEWBIES LAMENT BROKEN WINDOWS I LOVE THE RESISTANCE! BUBBLE WRAP DESPERATE TIMES TOLERANCE WHITE FEMINISM EMBODIMENT FRICTIONLESS DIFFERENCE, OR PEACEFUL PROTEST NOSTALGIA ECONOMIC REALISM COGNITIVE LABOR

ARMED CELL 12 Edited by Brian Ang [email protected] armedcell.blogspot.com Covers by Mayakov+sky Platform from Lipos-polis (towards Amphi-polis) mayakov-plus-sky.blogspot.com Physical edition of 100 Free ARMED CELL 12 was first distributed at Desert Poetry, Landers and Joshua Tree, April 7-9, 2017. ARMED CELL 13 will appear in October 2017. Submit cover images and writing by the end of August 2017 for consideration.

SHANE BOOK

ALL OF THE THINGS Of this family of six, I bet on two making it. The waters surrounding the café fall too trippy: police and thieves, pulling up on each other, airing shit out in these streets. One and a half chains is the sufficient name for that neighbourhood feeling, reframing us in the middle tones with its off the rack hose sense. “Do the regime,” it says. “In the long run it’s great for your skin.” I advise you to do as I do. I divide my time between recessions in Oakland.

UTILLIAN 720 Why you gotta dress like your head a giant Ferrero Rocher? The two love ladies in sarees always knew how to get the party livened up! These twin viewpoints stood as actual ideology. That and freedom of speech is paramount. Po-Biz Nomenklatura WTF you talking about? Indica is the new syndicate Zeus Iceborn to the head followed by a swift Zeus Iceborn to the head with the green light on connected to sativa buttered beef sliders. There are bound to be lost moments. But still. I wanna kick those liberals down the up escalator. Halle Berry gets impregnated in space! This is what monster’s ball did to you. They start to double down on the crap: dirt roads turn to super highways. The White man just said, that’s Janice, she’s my wife, she’s my Eskimo. for. T.G.J.

MURDERIZED BORDER Killt it. Dead. Now to deciding on a hippie back to the land native remedy. Let’s just call the new book Another Blackness We Aren’t Able To Push On Our Removable Cave Painter Anymore. The ladders in her eyes leave room for cream. Snatch those bleeding heart water bottles, because. This is handy: a royal bank of collared jeans obscures the glass wall of Spanx, withdrawing each mundane repeat member brain full blown Zapata style: side-mined hair, reinvigorating dark times multiple times in the belly port universal.

ZACK HABER

from HORRIBLE PLACES Oakland Police Department Administrative Building, 620 Washington St, Oakland, California 94607 She sliced me up. I’m sorry we can’t talk about that right now. You will have to come back here tomorrow. There’s stuffed animals behind bullet proof glass on the cops’ desks. Heavy doors here screech and scream when they are closing slowly—there’s a tiny terrifying explosion when the door hits the doorframe and reverberates throughout this cold metal room. All the folks I see here seem out of breath. There’s a homeless woman who’s set up an encampment in front of the building. A little girl walks in and looks at me suspicious but I cock my head up like I’m saying what’s up and she relaxes, sits down on the floor in the middle of the station and plays with a doll while the person she came in with (I’m assuming it’s her mom) talks to a cop. She sliced me up. I’m sorry we can’t talk about that right now. There are pictures here. There’s a picture here hung on the wall of five smiling cops—oh how their smiles look confused unfinished and constipated. Below that picture is another picture of a cop holding a tiny yellow dog and though she’s smiling she also looks devastated. Her smile looks like a migraine. And there’s a few shots of cops with kids and the cops got big forced smiles. But the kids look confused maybe mildly amused. The lights above me here are both dim and silver, evenly spaced from each other. “For privacy and accuracy, please stand behind the line and wait to be called” I copy down into my notebook. But after I walk away from that sign I wonder if I’ve written all the words down accurately. So I think to go back to double check but then I remember I’m almost certainly being recorded. Is double checking on that sign suspicious? Could doing that get me into trouble? Is just walking around writing with my notebook suspicious? One thing that’s not suspicious (for me) to do is to go to the bathroom. And so I go to the bathroom. I feel like I can feel most comfortable in this police station if I am in the bathroom stall, sitting on the toilet, writing poetry in my notebook while pretending to poop.

A & B Auto Vehicle Processing Inc. Public Impound Facility, 8717 G St., Oakland, California 94621

I don’t play games here. My family owns this place. Give me the money and I’ll know you’re serious.

I feel stale. I feel like stale toast. I feel like dander. I feel like stale dander. I feel like the tree in the parking lot, fertilized with plastic. There’s bugs inside this room and I am sitting on a stain on a chair with a part falling off of it while I wonder what the stain is though I know that I’ll never ever know what the stain is. But the weeds are beautiful. In the parking lot out front they peak through cracks in concrete and bushes knock over traffic cones. There are no gift certificates for this place says a sign on the glass that separates you from the people you give your money to in this room. That glass has murky brown stains on it. If that’s how much the tow yard is charging than that’s how much you have to pay. The building puked up the building but the building forgot to spit it out so the building’s holding the puked up building inside the building’s mouth. These frayed out holey curtains look like bile. There’s a man here whose bare chest bursts out of his open unbuttoned jacket. He cannot afford to get his car back. He’s asking another person here how much her car costs. His bright yellow lighter is somehow attached to his belt loop. The only thing that embraces this place is barbed wire fence and money. Here people’s faces are scrunched up like there’s sun in their eyes, but it’s dim here and we’re all inside. There’s a spider web over the sign that says INFORMATION. There’s dust all over the couple of M & Ms in front of the vending machine. I can’t really tell what color they are. There’s trash next to, but not inside of, the trash can. There’s a big hole in the side of the plastic trash can. There’s a fake plant made out of oil and there’s dust all over its leaves and there’s a dusty thin brown box leaning all over it. This carpet might as well be cigarette butts. Now is a good part in the poem to mention that A & B Auto Vehicle Processing Inc Public Impound Facility has a contract with the Oakland Police Department. The Oakland Police Department has all of the cars they decide to get towed, towed there.

Are you guys all set? You can just give me the money now it’s fine.

Sands Regency Casino Hotel, 345 N Arlington Ave, Reno, Nevada 89501 Air here is scraping my lungs. All of the air feels filtered through cigarettes. Though there’s white box structures that say pure air on them that I assume are blowing out pure air. Lots of lights are flashing but the flashes aren’t bright. So lots of folks are bathing in the mundane light. Bells and whistles and cha-chings gently flashy mixed with pop music makes a mundane pool of sound where nothing’s loud or quiet. I put two dollars into the game and I lost two dollars quickly and I’m not sure how the game worked or how I lost my money. Three people sitting together just pressing buttons shaking heads no no no jesus one of them says slowly. Faces look deflated like hope is escaping from them. The dice table guy looks confident. He has a gold chain and a tooth pick in his mouth. He looks like he knows what he’s doing. Other folks there don’t look as confident as him. I wonder if they are intimidated by him and the way he throws his dice. The rugs here look like billiard table tops. And even though every part of every rug is filthy, there are some parts of the rugs that are filthier than other parts. So I’m not trying to say that everything is symmetrical here. The plants here (which are fake) look hunched over as if they are dying. The ceiling is made of mirrors which somehow have smudges and stains on them. An OJ Simpson documentary plays at the bar on silent. I ask a security guard if there are any water fountains in this place. He exhales slow and deep. No, sorry, they don’t have those here. They don’t do that here? Nah. Sorry. In the bathroom there’s a cigarette cashed out on the floor and dirt all over two of the four sinks. Scrunched up wet paper towels are next to the other two sinks. Long dicks coming through I hear in the lobby a father talking to his two sons as they all walk fast almost robotic. Tell em, he says, tell em you got a long dick coming through. I see a drunk woman sliding down a hand rail and a worker’s there saying I’ll give you CPR if you fall but other than that you’re on your own. The folks working the card tables all have excellent posture and they raise their chins and turn their heads all slow and tough like a James Bond villian. Alright, I’m feeling it. I’m feeling it. God damn it. You see what I did? I’m orange. I’m the orange chips. That’s me. (And he’s wearing an orange shirt).

McLean Bible Church, 8925 Leesburg Pike, Vienna, Virginia 22182 The liberation of Mosul. Distributing blankets and diapers. For her to be able to do that shows connection to the father. Don’t be like a non-believer or an atheist who says survival of the fittest. If I don’t go on mission, who will? Pray to the lord to help you raise just eighty dollars or more. Pray for the Christians who are being persecuted for their beliefs. Pray for the children who were born into that awful place; it’s not their fault. A rock band stands at the precipice of rocking their Christian rock as the preacher leads us in prayer. When they start it sounds like cough syrup tastes and the singer’s face looks slightly hurt like he keeps farting little stinkers and feels bad for it but can’t stop. This place feels like a space ship. Beams of purple light separate me from the preacher. Light pouring down from little slits in the ceiling looks like stars. There’s fans evenly spaced from each other and wreathes evenly spaced from each other. It seems like everything alike is evenly spaced here. There’s guys (big guys) black suits with ties and earpieces and they’re looking at me and the people suspicious. They’re standing on sparkle clean carpet. Later they ask to look in my notebook to make sure I’m not drawing diagrams. I let them. There’s a couple thousand people here. I don’t see any other men here with hair longer than two inches. The preacher keeps saying everything in threes. His speech has palpitations. The people’s hands weakly are raised not like raising the roof but a gentle zombie. God bless you! says a person as she turns around and looks at me. You ARE a missionary for your family. And she gives me a high five.

Toys R Us / Babies R Us 3938 Horton Street, Emeryville, California 94608 Action flying super girl, become the champion. You wouldn’t see that big black tile crack at Walmart. Toys R Us, what’s become of you? Babyganics. Babies pictured on the diaper boxes seem to look out with a mocking grin. I need more lego people. But you already have a whole box of people. Yeah but I still need more lego people. You only get one big lego for your birthday. You have a million legos. Now they have car seats for kids up to ten. I see a guy ask a child who looks about that age or a little younger (I assume it’s his son) to pick up one of the car seats. Then the guy points to the register across the store and the kid carries the seat there. On the other side of the store it’s more colorful. Bright green and red. Kids hitting each other with toy swords but not mad at all. Big aisle of angry white muscle army dudes with tanks and guns. Ninja turtle aisle across and facing the half power ranger and half marvel comic aisle. Woman with white hair walks fast, holds a puzzle, touches head, looks like do-i-really-have-todo- this. Yeah attention everyone we have a birthday in the store everyone say happy birthday Pedro. Happy birthday! Yeah. Happy birthday! There are no windows in this place so it feels like a cave but a carnival clown and confetti cave. Forty five dollar little mermaid guitar made in china advertises gross motor skills, social learning, fine motor skills, language learning, cognitive skills. You could learn from this guitar made in china. You could improve yourself.

DANIELLE LAFRANCE

I MIGHT DIE BEFORE I LIKE IT I love it barbarically I will love it in the future but not today Waste dispersal In the delirium of mopping up ocean resorts To turning on the environment Cry wolf for the environment Lovability flames Littoral

I put a grenade in my chest Red speckle. Unreadily lodged between Humiliation and excitement. Ticklish stir Tits out is the only way to stay Bouffant To its descendents I give this last course I will give to its descendents All these confections

Homeowners wade in warm milk Special delivery. It’s a nasty method Restoration of behaviour. Abandon all complaints I understand it makes sense of it for them Bears with it a logic Even less am I moved by vulgar curiosity Whether a sign is truer flesh than horoscopes

If Pyramus cheats on Thisbe who dies first Successions of agony and rapture It’s not their time for friendship. Uninhibited animals Transubstantiate alcoholism A battle cry. Pedestal into six feet under Like throwing a Molotov cocktail At its own body dressed in gold

Dear working class subway sandwich Sire more noise as you peak Understand how to capitulate foul play for plans Clean up patriarchy’s pooh-pooh platter Never lose the consumptive belief Baptism will save you Remember revolutionary tokens cost Far less than your limp biscuit

MICHAEL LEONG

from DISORIENTATIONS

____________ “Disorientations” collages together—and so “disorients”—two postmodern Orientalist texts: Kent Johnson’s Doubled Flowering: From the Notebooks of Araki Yasusada, a yellowface simulation of hibakusha literature, and Roland Barthes’s Empire of Signs, a semiotic treatise based on an invented system Barthes calls “Japan.”

Dear Buried Resistances: I sent you a few notebooks written by a man who unsigned his identity only to see it appear again tethered to the fibrous emptiness of his language. Look at how the manipulated smoke rings are throwing a slippery light on his frontispiece. You might have said to him that forty-five minutes was clearly not enough for the slowness of ingestion, for Saturday to exhaust its prefectural impressions. To feign another color is slow, difficult work, no longer taboo (or regressive) for the softening stations of the painter’s eye. But our suspicion of the essential cannot afford losing sight of the soggy distance between East and West, of the carbon thud-slap that is essentially the consequence of his ideological blossom. Even without a center or heart, flesh is fundamentally marked. As it becomes hidden behind layers and layers of calligraphic or tutelary ornament, it still sends—sometimes without first saying so—its intended regards. Though it is a mostly uniform belief that a poet is never constrained by the drafts in her fictive portfolio, I wonder if he (the man in question) thought at all about the other way around. Here, everything is a source; and everything subtly bears the maternal pressure of parentheses. Yours is a depth detached of all surrounding becoming substance, like an instrument that refuses to cut pieces of polished stone from the summer glare of mountains. But I’m sure you realize that, on the pure level of praxis, photographs mutilate the promise of light. Thus, much would come of the elastic time of chrysanthemums, of the brief and finely measured paper of the wrestler’s cigarette. Are you as excited as I? The food for our jotted possibilities is on the table. I will send it to you soon. It was Emily Dickinson, no, who proposed that the alphabet is a series of fragments with which one can place side by side what, what was, and what will be? Don’t you think that it is the same in Japanese? For originality to be transferred to its interminable translations, inspiration has to select moments that can pass back through an impeccable itinerary of rivers. It is in its adolescent nature to repeat itself, as a long uninterrupted text or a secret hat dance from Hiroshima. The decentered medium, once “started,” unites a single time—that of its fabrication and that of its consumption—into one plum-colored impulse. That is to say we “converse” without the indirect accompaniment of a conversation. Perhaps our death has been previously written in elaborate anthologies of sugar, a pinch which the divinity sometimes samples with vital pincers. As you know, the past is merely the recognizable bones of the moment, and each month is but an echo, seasoning—then sponging up—our undated ink. Please write soon,

[ somewhere inside the primitive province, inside the courtship of pines, inside the pure altitude of the weeping,

* try to recall the photo finish of tonight,

]

thrown and falling through the mouth of tomorrow

we were working behind the door in geometric austerity arranging our chopsticks into kilometers of concrete poetry, into a high energy hieroglyph in which the moss-covered knowledge of your Eastern dreams will pulse —like a koi out of water or live sashimi —and vanish

*

Where does writing begin?

In an undated interjection,



in the blotted air folded into a dark crease

of the labyrinth.



[ [ [ […] ] ] ]



There I placed the spirit of predatory soldiers in the mouth of an origami bird, a harmony



of hair

and seaweed.

Where does painting begin?

By the gradually lowered root.



In the desired medium that is the market. No, in the flow of our plural blood, in which the knife of a fossil language crouches.

grass can no longer divide a fragment of Earth

it would be

like the way a new-made line in the sand smiles at its own contour of reluctance

perhaps it is the first

in an allied series of open parentheses : a symbol of peace you said but chambered inside a kind of crust of cultural approximations

it appears

possible then that the cut chrysanthemum may be a fictional construction replaced somewhere between banzai and doko ni or in the fluid interpretations of karate it appears possible that the outlines of the scream was identifiable to bat-like ears in the Mediterranean or to clenched hands in the Middle East but what matters here is how time becomes light becomes substance perforated by the radiation of a hundred cities in meditation a rite of memorial not expiation that circulates a poised and compact gesture of intensity — to burn the origin without heating

Oil tenses in this February light. It is not, we cried, the final meaning of immersion. As a matter of fact, the entire gamut of reason spreads-out at such and such a time and so forth. Sometimes our guide takes the form of a little drunk monk whose dream of contradiction makes visible the progressive stages of the instantaneous. In order to make us witnesses to the velocity of that sky-colored chaos, he literally folded up, with his papery fingers, the transparent grammar of the stars. Before our eyes, the hierarchized arrangement of pond, water, and cloud separated, the green interfacements opening in the general direction of Mount Horai. Big urn but tiny merchandise. Production value entirely perforated. I like to think, you said, that galaxies select the observatory and how it loses its virginity, not the other way around. On the menu is an indescribably wonderful haiku so refined that the “poem” accomplishes the perfection of the technical without any techniques. We know the French always love to look forward to the tang of the illegible. Like flowers of flowers. Intently. Someone had commanded: circle stone interstice. The artist squatted over the canvass and shouted: eventual edges. We must return to stall this trifling conclusion, especially if the image on the other side of the telescope is of a Jap but not Japanese. It is he who has arranged the paper and inkstone on the calligrapher’s table, but it is you who is the empty sign—like the sperm of a single white idea, aerial and expanding.

EMJI SPERO

FREEWAY STATEMENT from EXHAUSTION: A RETCHING I begin writing this for a block in front of me I was standing on the edge of the mass, From the edge I could see better. You and I locked eyes “I’m gonna go,” you said, “do you want to?” “Yeah,” I said, People were running past me I made it to the top I was standing on the freeway “Let’s go over there,” I said. You and I hopped the median when I noticed six riot cops I looked to the East. I couldn’t tell how many police deep it was. I looked to the South. “We need more people over here,” I shouted “We need more bodies,” I shouted again. You and I and the others I ended up in the East I linked arms with you on my right and with a woman I’ve never met on my left, Once they were close enough that I could see their eyes, I held tighter to you and the woman. just in front of me I think you fell. I had one arm bent over my head I was sucked back into the center of the crowd

I pushed my way back toward the edge of the crowd I didn’t see one, so I pushed my way toward a different edge of the crowd. I did this a few times. I was looking for you I told some of the people in the crowd I was now at the front of the crowd at the Southernmost edge I noticed a small gap right in front of me. I jumped into the space I got to my feet I sprinted for Telegraph. There were maybe a thousand of us. There were maybe a thousand of us. and we sprinted for the hill and we scrambled up it. We ran together with the others We had been there a few minutes, we formed a line, the crowd frothing behind us. or what would happen if we did not leave. With a whole crowd behind us, We were surrounded on all sides and were striking out at us trying to force us back, We were trying to pull her back up, telling us to disperse that we were going to be arrested, though it seemed likely that we would be. that we should all try to run toward the hillside together They began to approach Large gaps between them. They were also shoulder to shoulder. one of them told us get off the freeway.

They did not give us a time limit for leaving. They did not mention arrest, but they were just pushing us but they kept pushing us back for protection from their batons, and they had not said and told them to spread the word. You were my buddy. looking around and around for you. Tall. You’re wearing my scarf. Easy to find. Found you. You. but couldn’t find you. There were maybe fifty people There was no announcement to disperse. there was no way to retreat. to see if there was a way out. There were maybe thirty or forty people There didn’t seem to be any way out. the large crowd of protesters was processing Some protesters broke away Beyond the crowd of protesters protesters began linking arms. a police line was forming across Telegraph. A solid line of riot cops a weaker line of riot cops stood ready. As the police approached facing the oncoming march of the police line.

The lines of police were approaching. by lines of police. The police held their batons with both hands straight into the other police lines. The police responded with more pushing. The white male cop inside a tight ring of riot cops. The police still had not made any announcement between the two officers between the two officers The crowd stretched out The crowd continued from the main body of the crowd to the main crowd. and ran toward the main crowd at the front of the crowd, The crowd was a bit calmer now. north on Telegraph at 34th. and a block behind. near to the sidewalk by the Walgreens. Straight ahead, just beyond the far side of the freeway underpass, and veered off to the right, running through the Walgreens parking lot and straight up the hill to the freeway. to the middle of the freeway. onto Eastbound side of the 580. on the Eastbound side. Less people on the Westbound side, maybe ten. A few cars were getting through to the West. for the Westbound side. forming a line along the northernmost edge of the freeway. parallel to the median. stretched all the way across the Eastbound side,

along the Southernmost edge of the freeway, hopped back over the median on the Eastbound side. from the North and the East, At the center it was calmer. by the hillside. and rolled partway down the hill. just after waking. Last night, November 25th, around 8:30pm, and nodded. and the still-blocked traffic, and someone else shouted, “We are trying to leave.” and she fell. and many more people also fell. and looked back. with the others. with the long side of their batons, with round wire-rim glasses with the other hand. No shields. No one came. Some people were trying to leave but could not. No one followed. The moment is still fresh. to march toward them, shouting. It’s good to have a buddy.

Someone to keep an eye out for you. The hill was steep in a surge of other scramblers. Traffic had come to a full stop. Traffic had stopped on both sides. Helmets and batons out. Backing up, approaching. Fuck. Someone shouted, “Don’t fucking touch her,” struck the black woman beside me with his baton, hard, while trying to pull people up from the ground as though caught in a riptide. of the freeway

Oakland, California November 28, 2014 This piece was written using language, rearranged, from a statement I wrote for a friend’s trial. He was arrested when we were kettled by the police on the I-580 during a demo in solidarity with protestors in Ferguson after a grand jury decided not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the murder of Michael Brown.

Don’t congratulate yourself, you said when I told you how I had jumped through the police line. Don’t martyr your experience—and you're right. We all just do what we need to. We all just do what we can’t not do. And when my white body runs, it does not get shot.

CALEB BECKWITH

THEY LIVE rugged data entry embroiled compost dearth stuck shiver of invention

ACCELERATIONIST RENAISSANCE raw dogged canon anoint another aphasic flat earth undercurrent tortured sense corrected and unconscionable

DIALECTICIANS a certain curtain

COUNTER-HEGEMONIC DYSPHORIA polyphonic homology mask up blockbuster cement truck reverse orgone hard drive

MUTUAL AID on the hook confirmation bias immaterial outdoor affection by crook, please somebody

BLACK BLOC IN THE NATION OR, THE MATERIALISTS going out of business american apparel 40% off

NEWBIES LAMENT bayside story salon tan tastes like soap enough at least fled destruction spoiled flesh

BROKEN WINDOWS tired repetition fluorescent endocrine prone to fits of abyss it’s spring

I LOVE THE RESISTANCE! half life relief valve diet Gnosticism

BUBBLE WRAP double layer spam folder police grade spotter acid I’m complicit get me out of here!

DESPERATE TIMES real life rally cap measured in a vacuum skull tattoo is also something

TOLERANCE yogic endurance runoff election silent but deadly

WHITE FEMINISM ethical pink eye

EMBODIMENT bottom text down side brutal look

FRICTIONLESS DIFFERENCE, OR PEACEFUL PROTEST dogpark paradise headlamp gaslight wait your turn

NOSTALGIA armchair professional friendly outfit depressed value irrational optimism systemic clarity astral projection

ECONOMIC REALISM gold dust hangover cure interview on ice stay salty my friends

COGNITIVE LABOR weathered honeymoon savings account lizard brain exercise probiotic thirst 9-5 decline anytime, buddy