To Be Alive at 19

A short lyric essay full of form, fact and fiction on my early political life

note: A lyrical essay reflecting on the past and current moments. Some is fact. Some is fiction. But it’s all real.

What did it mean to be alive at nineteen? All I know is that many of you are dead despite the fact that you still breathe.

The beauty of an uprising cannot be adequately described. The voices of comrades lifted as the first pane of glass breaks. The police running to put out the damn fire. The black masks across our faces. The pursuit and eventual escape. And sometimes, it is less glorious. We have spent so many hours in courtrooms. Days in jail. And it is all a game to them. And yet, I am alive.

These moments are fleeting and sometimes I've missed them. There are quieter ones too. We talk of Pan-Africanism, class struggle, and the culture of our people next to a bonfire. Small occupations outside of the enemy’s fortress. Every moment together full of inadequate political strategy and cigarette smoke. Our hatred for the socialists is shared common theme. The snow falls after another lecture we attend to expand our political consciousness. Sometimes to be alive is absurd. But now we hurt our former friends in moments of political evaporation because if we cannot fight the system, we fight each other. We could it blame it on the white boyfriends, inadequate political organization, anti-Blackness, the destruction of the worker's movement or maybe we're all just adjusting negatively to the fact that nothing is going to change. Everything stays the same.

Political hope was for those with delusion and designs on power. We read Desert and Blessed is the Flame together as the early August sun crashed into our heads. Our delusions were burned away long ago. No one is coming to save us. I'm bumping the latest Brockhampton single as I take the Broad Street Line north. Frank Ocean's Blonde is still a young album.

But I am not nineteen. So many friends are gone. Dead, imprisoned, or just distant. And we can't blame them. Fanon quotes can only do so much to sustain oneself. A thousand different twitter arguments about the Panthers reap no reward. Social movements are regulated through the Internet and maybe that's why it's so fucking hard to reach out and touch one another.

And yet, I breathe in the the tear gas. We hold each other close as we hide in the bushes. We want every Nazi dead while the president calls us terrorists. I rapped about hating the fascists and pigs in basements next to my brothers. I read Our Friends by the Invisible Committee at the Pitchfork Musical Festival with my girl as Soccer Mommy sang that song about Scorpios rising. But you are not alive. You are dead. We hosted cookouts to celebrate and cling to our hatred of prisons and the whole world beyond them. There is more anger and more sadness churning inside of us than I can ever hope to describe through giving a glimpse of life at 19. We are still stuck longing for those moments when were nineteen or twenty cause it all felt so simple.

Now a lot of my friends are just stuck working. They hope that whoever is running for office will make their lives marginally better while the never-ending gentrification cycle spins our city into another playground for the rich but if we just vote one more time, they swear it'll be different. I won't lie either. A thousand broken windows can't repair the damage that the financiers and imperialists have brought down on the world. But you told me you believed in freedom.

Some of our other friends find purpose at corporate/nonprofit/academic jobs while we sit wondering how they disappeared so fast. I don't want to say onward comrades. Cause what are we onward towards? Our own ruination. We used to read zines about why State had to be abolished but they are telling me that they think that the next election must be the right one. But I can’t even blame them, every city with a new socialist must be what it was like when Obama won the first time. Joy and passion in spite of the young communards complaining that it will never be enough.

At twenty, I sat with my girlfriend from back then on a sun drenched porch. I showed her a book I was writing about the history of the an ideology that everyone misinterprets in relation to a people that everyone hates. The book is published now but she's gone. And we couldn't even bother to do a release event or reading group for it. At least the left academics get some wine and stale crackers. We don't even believe in any movement anymore. I certainly don't. You are dead. But perhaps I'm dead too. Or at least, I'm sleep walking.

What does victory mean? A thousand different cuts along my body while I wonder why is everyone my age is so excited about something that makes me feel like I'm reliving my arguments at twenty, I was at some Temple house show with debating with a white Marxist. We used to yell fuck the police with t-shirts wrapped around our faces and skateboards in our hands. Our days were spent on the Brooklyn waterfront after a radical film screening while we talked about how white anarchists pissed us off. And I agree cause anarchy isn't just for them.

But we are both so tired. My friends and lovers from that time are mostly gone now. They are in Amsterdam, a PhD program, an AA meeting, Federal prison, the hospital or the South of France. While I'm struggling to find housing, considering (as always) returning to my childhood hometown. Our collective memories and beliefs dashed upon the rocks of adulthood. And I get it. I just wish I had been less afraid.

But hurry comrade, the world is not yet done. They are dead. We are alive. Some of us still miss the conflagrations no matter how uneven or impractical they were. We are coasting, shifting, and sleepwalking. Like zombies. There is smoke in Los Angeles, California. And I see the fires in your eyes, still.

OccupyPHA - North Philadelphia - 2019 - RIP Jen