THE 4DM1N1STR4T1V3 W31GHT...

the administrative weight 
of repression moves slowly; 
collectively, we're nimble 

L3TT3RS M4N1PVL4T3D...

letters manipulated 
beyond their square foundation... 
fractal reflections of space 

SONG OF THE DAY: Poor Loser

The rise of Artisanal Poverty in American culture over the past quarter century has been strange, where the children of affluence conceal themselves in the camouflage of struggle, only to end up buying houses cheaply in “bad” neighborhoods, after years of renting in same places, driving up the “value” of those locations collectively. The first sign of successful occupation is the small business bakery, in a corner store front that had either been abandoned for a while, or was a church, or some weird shit. But now it’s a bakery, with really delicious but expensive pastries and breads, and literally nothing else. Definitely pie. The boutique pie shop is a definite staple of the Artisanal Poverty movement. Many of the denizens still dress as if they’re street urchins from Birmingham (UK) in the decades after the Industrial Revolution, but most of them are college graduates, albeit struggling in the declining American Empire, thus often required to work service industry jobs while also “building” their own small businesses through the access to wealth they always had as foundational support. They make money, but also have a lot of bills, thus they’re always “broke”, usually because they have to access forms of wealth they’d rather not more often than they’d like to. And for many of them, used to seeing the previous generations accumulate wealth rather than barely hold even or actually dip into that wealth, it feels like they are broke somehow. They try to save money, only going to the pie shop or corner pastry spot a couple times a month, rather than every Tuesday afternoon like it used to be. They share the logins for streaming services with their close circle, so that they can still watch everything important without having to pay for it directly. Eventually, the original house in an old neighborhood loses its luster because everything got “too bougie” and gentrified for them, the earliest colonizers of a bad neighborhood. So they sell it, quietly, without calling a lot of attention to the move, because profiting off a neighborhood that they directly helped gentrify breaks the Artisanal Poverty aesthetics. Keep that on the down low, but they can roll the profits into paying their parents or grandparents back a little bit of money, to keep things kosher for the next time they have to lean on that wealth that will inevitably fall to them anyways. Plus, usually they got a little extra to roll into a new truck down payment for their construction business, which also helps validate the Artisanal Poverty vibes, because it’s like they are an old country music song, except they are wealthy, and hardly rural in cultural practice, despite what their location may have ever suggested. Artisanal Poverty’s clout levels have risen immensely in recent years, due to the expansion of memes, which have co-opted skillets (aka “frying pans” to most of them), pop country music of yesteryear, and pre-suburban imagery of rural America. Most of them don’t realize pop country has never been truly rural, in many many decades, and they are worshipping a past vision of American life that never actually existed in the first place, not unlike Trump supporters, just from a contrarian position. Dolly Parton is the patron saint of Artisanal Poverty, which is no diss to Dolly, because I play my “Jolene” 45 at 33 rpm at least a couple times a month still, though to be honest the shit I go to more often than not is the first Trio record. Artisanal Poverty loves Dolly Parton, and Reba McIntire too, but never has shit to say about Emmylou Harris, ever. Very telling. But Dolly’s visual aesthetics plus progressive attitudes towards sexuality makes her the patron saint of Artisanal Poverty. So if you find yourself walking through a strange city, and you’re going through a rough-looking neighborhood, so your media-ingrained anxieties start to rise, and you’re slipping into hyper-awareness fight-or-flight mode, but all of a sudden you see a small bakery shop, for some weird reason, with Dolly Parton blasting respectfully loud inside, fear not friend, you’re not in an actual poor neighborhood. It’s just an Artisanal Poverty zone, and you’re safe (as long as you or your parents’ credit rating is good enough). Try the organic apple fritters, and lose yourself in trying to decipher all the colorful expensive tattoos’ super-clever meaning!

B4R3LY TR34D1NG W4T3R WH1L3...

barely treading water while 
also feeling like retread 
myself… at least not balding 

SONG OF THE DAY: Pass

The malls are all nearly empty now; they sold off the last headless department store mannequins a couple months back, 90% off the overpriced starting point. The only thing left now are a used book store where the old dude sells junk he gets in bulk for free from estate dump-offs, and the military surplus store, where you could get a nice knife but they're gonna look at you funny if you're wearing a mask of anything other than a beard and naive belief in freedom as a god. A couple stores can now afford rent where they used to be kiosks, and you always hope it turns into a giant international flea market, pull the unpainted food trucks up to the big double doors of the long gone tire center on whatever all purpose capitalist destination from three decades ago could give you tires along with your home goods, let the wretched of the earth, who have come here always but hidden in the corners of this country, finding shelter in the gaps between margins, let them thrive in this place. But it won't happen. The value of the land's potential is always more than what poor people can actually do with it. These old buildings will hang on, out of kindness to the small business owners who are respectably white, but eventually be bulldozed and hauled away, and replaced by a new investment opportunity, unfaded by time, bright and shiny and made of the newest plastics, which decay even more slowly than the ones from before, although it all ends up in the same pile eventually, far beyond the horizons we pay attention to. Those are the hills you see, cutting a skyline in the twilight of America, piles of rubble of dead dreams, with a thin layer of soil and grass sown over top, sprayed with pesticides to keep any dandelions or four-leaf clovers from blooming, and fucking up the eternal sameness.

SONG OF THE DAY: Away Away

“Capitalism” is such a dogmatic sounding word, that I’m not sure if you’re practicing something so polysyllabic you can do it ethically. But the other day I went to my local Afghan market, and thought about how it’s the type of business I like to support. I had passed by earlier on the bus and saw a dude unloading a bunch of bags of flatbread from the trunk of his car, obviously somebody who made it themselves. That flatbread was looking good as fuck in passing so I figured after I did a couple things, I’d wander my way on foot back by the market.

When I did finally get back, there was another dude in the tight aisles, blocking my path to the half-gallon of mint ayran (a must). Really all I came in for was ayran, dates, and one of them bags of that flatbread. Dude in aisle went to check out, which is just one counter, where the dudes who work there are always giving out of date candy to kids, and an old Afghan dude is generally sitting inside within talking distance of the counter, unless it’s warm, and he might be sitting outside. Dude in front of me asks about paneer, and guy behind the counter says, “No, we only get paneer in on Wednesdays.” I’d asked about goat before and they only get that on Fridays. And obviously it looks like the flatbread bags come in on Monday. I always fuck up and forget to go by on Fridays to get goat though, which bums me out, because I bet some halal goat would recharge my depleted ass.

Once I was checking out, I asked how much the flatbread bags were. (Please understand when I say “bag” I mean large ass turkey size bag with flatbread pieces larger than a pizza.) “$6.90, but there’s ten of them in there.” I had to get that, and have been snacking on them all week long. Hungry as fuck in the middle of the evening? Rip off half a piece of flatbread, grab four or five dates, I’m good. I bought enough shit this particular time I had to use a card, but generally speaking I try to use cash there. And I’ve noticed that as I’ve used cash, usually for single serving mint ayran bottles, the price can fluctuate slightly to your benefit, as both a regular customer and a cash-paying customer.

All of this, as I walked out to catch the bus with my big bag of flatbread, made me realize this is exactly the type of business I feel good about supporting. Cash between hands (hopefully) helps cut out government embezzlement of survival wealth, and a place that is filled in its tiny location, that is content in operating at that filled and functional level, only having goat on Friday, paneer on Wednesday, and flatbread on Monday, is okay by me. We always have this notion that growth should be continual, and that you need larger stores, more franchises, everything should be available at all times. That type of growth is unnatural, and thus likely unethical, no matter how you do it. Natural world is not continuous – you can get some shit sometimes, and other shit other times. It’s not all available around the calendar, at your convenience. Fuck man, life is not convenient. It takes some work and navigation and effort. That’s how it should be. Moving from providing for your life and your family and a few others to where you feel the need to accumulate wealth and control a whole arsenal of marketplaces like that… I don’t know that I think that can ever be ethical. If you’re sitting around in some faraway place contemplating how you can improve profitability (another too many syllables word to ever be simple enough to be ethical) without actually putting your ass in a market, standing around on your feet, breaking down boxes to put in the recycling bin beside the dumpster, or sweeping anything, then I don’t know if you’re thinking with all the heart you need to be thinking with. Ever. Not even on Mondays, when your work week starts, and flatbread is coming in.

S3V3N G4LL0NS 0F 01L C00K3D...

seven gallons of oil cooked

inside of each tire, rendered

useless by worn away tread

SONG OF THE DAY: I Did

Woke up this rainy morning imagining what if I operated a food truck except it'd be a food winnebago, and I know I'd have to sell chicken gizzards, and it'd be an anti-hipster spot, and I'd be bumping Choosey & Exile this morning most likely. But of course being anti-hipster ends up becoming hipster because in this day and age of self-loathing, where few things are whiter than white people making fun of white folks, and nobody decolonizes so much as recolonizes in a different more exciting way, and I'd hate my own creation and set it on fire one night, by accident on purpose, to save me having to interact with the filthy self-important privileged human beings that one is required to interact with to have a successful business in late stage capitalism.

But I'd definitely have chicken gizzards, because nowhere makes good gizzards. There was even a soul food spot in the gentrified portion of Belmont, and they had gizzards, and I got them, thinking they'd be great, but they wasn't. Most places don't even fuck with them. My favorite gizzard spot right now is a gas station outside of Dillwyn, true Southside Virginia, where the last time I stopped they still had peach Perriers a dollar each if you got two, and the lady working the food counter was talking shit to a logging trucker who stopped in for lunch and threatening him with the butcher knife, and he was like "You see how she do me?" to me, and then I got involved, and we all talked shit together like a bunch of bumpkin ass multi-racial hicks in true and living southside Virginia style, while she filled up styrofoam clamshells with gizzards and livers for the both of us. That's my five-star review, but I ain't telling you what gas station outside Dillwyn, or where Dillwyn is. Find it, then try all the gas stations that got gizzards. Do your own research, bitch.

My dad's favorite meal was fried chicken livers, made them on his birthday every year, big heaping plate full of livers with onions and mustard. I always preferred the gizzards but looking back I wonder if that was one of those trickle down things, like I knew he was gonna eat all the damn livers so I trained myself to love the gizzards. Although I guess nowadays livers are sold separately, and gizzards and hearts come in packs together.

I love chicken hearts too, from when I was younger at a big ass drunken cookout as a kid, and one of my dad's friends put the hearts on the grill (which was an old grate from a long gone kitchen stove sitting on cinderblocks over a fire), and at first I was like "eww, hearts," but then I had them and loved them.

The process of writing is always beneficial because some barbaric shit will make itself obvious when you type it out. Reading "I love the hearts of chickens grilled over a fire on an old stove grate" is kinda shocking to the cultured ass word typing side of me. But then again both sides aren't really sides, and it's all 69ing inside of me - big ol' spiraling ball of dirtgod energy. All of this is who I am, and I love it.

B4S3M3NT WR3STL1NG M4TCH3S H3LD...

basement wrestling matches held

in abandoned buildings ten

dollar cover charge you dorks

4NGRY 4N1M4L MVR4L...

angry animal mural

on side of small town butcher

shop - QUIT EATING US YOU BITCH!

1ND3P3ND3NT GR0C3RY...

independent grocery

store with a meat counter you

can ask for more chicken feet

0LD C0MM3RC14L BV1LD1NGS L3FT...

old commercial buildings left

abandoned 'til demolished,

then they re-prime with newness

P0CK3TS 0F 1NDVSTR10VS...

pockets of industrious

old school cash economics

tucked away in metal strip malls

SONG OF THE DAY: Waitin' Round to Die/Kathleen

My latest gofundme is to rent an abandoned restaurant space in an old metal building strip mall where a panaderia shut down, and I’m just gonna offer up fried chicken and pancakes, that’s all, but get one of those working class murals on the outside, you know how the neighborhood was built on people who fastened freight trains together out of the soapstone slabs they dug out the native river forks, and all the old houses of the neighborhood were that traditional cheap company housing but which is still superior to modern building techniques, although most of them are now painted pastel blossoms of property value increases, which has allowed some of the old company houses to be torn down and have new innovative things get built that look like recycling boxes devised by Mr. Miyagi if he opened a school after becoming ego-driven once Daniel-san won as a training mechanism for all his students, “no no no, you are not doing it right, watch, staple… stucco… net. staple… stucco… net.” And then I’ll decorate my new rundown strip mall restaurant in all the quirky old school ways of the 1950s, but without any real consistency. And there will be a jukebox, but it won’t actually play records, just a complete assortment of versions of this song, because I’ll actually have a tiny 4th generation ipod nano I took from my daughter inside the jukebox. I’ll take my fried chicken serious, bread it up just right; the pancakes, not so much, I mean its pancakes. Have some fancy locally harvested sustainably abstained maple syrups, maybe even extreme alternatives like cedar syrup or some crazy shit. This will all be a front to draw in the faux-country crowd who buy $45 “vintage” shirts to dress up like their racist grandfather on a Saturday night, because I’m just gonna work, be all friendly, act like it’s all good and I’m a serious entrepreneur. Then one day, when I have just the right mix of faux-country assholes, no people with trustworthy eyes in sight, and some eastern European looking dude with a Rollie Fingers mustache and a name patch on his work shirt that says “Nicky Boy” asks me how comes there’s no Sturgill Simpson on the jukebox, I’m gonna lock the door and murder everybody, but not myself. No murder-suicide for your boy the Dirtgod. I’ve got a lot of reading to catch up on finally.

SONG OF THE DAY: Loser

my back tattoo is only half a back 

the purity of natural born loser's poor choices 

was gonna get outlaw Jack of Diamonds 

representing myself - outlaw jack of all words 

and then Suicide King to signify 

paternal blood lines - reckless king of all dives 

then at the top in garishly beautiful script 

STANDING PAT - a blackjack hand not destined 

to win automatically but 

fuck it, still pretty good 

got the jack done, third eye activated 

small side street in Scottsville tattoo parlor 

operated by a dude from down the road 

but then he was gone, to Germany or Arizona 

and his style was too unique plus affordable 

being a small town and shit 

so never got the suicide king 

just half a back tattoo, holding a jack of diamonds 

waiting for life to deal me the other card 

every now and then my youngest child 

walks by as I'm shirtless (naturally) 

and she slaps my back, yelling 

SLAPJACK! and runs off laughing 

one of my blessings to remember since it feels like 

some folks lose so hard 

they never even finish getting their hand dealt 

before life folds up on top of them 

like metaphysical tangle of blackberry bushes 

fruitless to fight 

BVNCH3S 0F HVM4N TR4FF1C...

bunches of human traffic

patterns intersect at south

end of town, always popping

4 T0VCH 0F B4CKW00DS PR3S3NT...

a touch of "backwoods" present

in every corner store,

but it's behind the counter

FR3SH C04T 0F P41NT T0 VPGR4D3...

fresh coat of paint to upgrade

from doomed clientele to those

still pretending they're not doomed

SVBJ3CT1V3 R34L1TY...

subjective reality

forever challenging my

views about what's real or not

1M4G1N3D THR0WB4CK J3RS3YS...

imagined throwback jerseys

purchased at flea markets which

are not allowed to exist