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“not all cops”

I work in a non-restraint facility for special needs kids (21 and under) with extreme behavioral issues. I’m talking real violent stuff. Sixteen and twenty-one year old boys who can (and do) home-run swing desks at your head.

As a non-restraint facility, we are trained to respond to these outbursts in the most non-threatening, non-confrontational way possible, while still protecting both the bystanders and the person currently attacking us.

We are monitored every second of our shift to make sure the safety and dignity of our clients is maintained, especially–and just let me emphasize this–the safety and dignity of the person attempting to hurt us. Their right to be treated fairly and with empathy is not forfeit just because their brain chemistry fucked them up today.

We have to be calm, regardless.

We have to be gentle, regardless.

We can never respond with any kind of force, ever.

Those rules apply to all the staff, all the time, no matter what.

So when I hear bullshit about how somebody “reached for their waistband” or they were “resisting,” when I hear yet another police officer got off because the situation was “scary” or he “feared for his safety” or whatever the fuck, I lose my shit.

You wanna talk about how you were frightened for your safety, walking up to someone in the middle of a psychotic episode? Yeah, well, I’ve been there. Pretty regular–probably twice a week, at least–no gun, no taser, with guidelines that state I cannot even use my fucking thumb because that’s considered “grabbing” and therefore a “restraint.”

And you know what? I’ve walked away from every one of those. I haven’t died. I’ve never even been seriously injured. We defused the situation in ways that didn’t involving riddling the other participant with bullets and at the end of the day, everyone went home. Go fucking figure.

And yet–and fucking yet–I keep hearing “not all cops.”

“Not all cops” are bad. “Not all cops” shoot innocent people .3 seconds after rolling up on the scene. “Not all cops” are racist fuckbags, misusing power for a personal joyride. “Not all cops” rape people at gunpoint (and get off scott-fucking-free).

Yet, at my place of employment, somehow everyone is calm in a crisis. Somehow everyone responds to violence with non-violence. Somehow everyone is always able to act like a goddamn compassionate human-being in the middle of the worst kind of street fight–

but you’re telling me that cops, people paid to protect, can’t all do what I do?

You’re telling me that cops, trained to respond to crises, can’t all respond to the same crises, with the same skill, that I do?

And you’re telling me that cops have to stick together in the face of these “potentially false” accusations. That cops have to support each other, no matter what, because their job is dangerous or whatever. That yeah, some cops, but ~actually, sweetie, not all cops~

Fuck that noise. My job is dangerous, too. But you better believe that if anyone sees a member of our staff breaking regulation, their ass gets reported immediately. That person loses their clearances; they can no longer be hired in the field, anywhere. There’s no moving to another district. There’s no finding another location. We make it stop.

So until every cop is cleaning house, until every cop stops this strategically blind bullshit, until every cop refuses to stand by and watch the rampant abuse and corruption inherent in this system, until all the bad cops are weeded out and unemployable–

Until that moment, then yeah, all cops.

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the one holding the cigarette is me

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Cornered

I’ll wear my distraction like

Social proof but

Ultimateley

If you could trace my corneas

Or their projection on a wall

They’d sweat

And frenzy around your rapid fire lips

My parents used to do this too

You think you’ve seen every part of a room

When the view changes with your head between your knees

Watching colors and boxed shadows bleed

You press hard on your eyelids

There’s nothing wrong with being out of answers

No, no, don’t know

Please

Cuticles clip like

Bridged bats

digging hard into my thigh meat

I know doom when I see it

Unearthing hair follicles

Unhinging jaws

They say planks burn slower

When they’re tightly packed

There are some beasts I will never strong-arm

When sunken nail marks in my legs

Call me unworthy

No matter how deep you go

Treading warm water

Some people will never sink

Slamming doors beat between my ears

Its seems contradictory when emptiness erupts

When you say yes

When you say help

When you say stop

Every person in this room is scared

But only one is hurling arrows

Only one made a pincushion

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Sanguin

I am addicted

To moaning at ghosts

And running from egg yolks

The stench of lesbians

Caved in rosy habits

When meaning is feminized by

Warped cherrywood and replaced in

Bloodied water

Addicted to

Feeding yeast and

Pressing paper

Stacking coins

And brooding bath water

What is a woman

But a girl that learns to sleep hungry?

What is a woman but an egg

Or a vessel

Or a well

Don’t conflate meaning in truth

Don’t bear punches for angry babies

Be a mind

A soldier

A poet

Uproot

Scrub your stretch marks

Smudge your eyeliner

Men be a poisoned fetus

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Pond Scum

It’s a feeling that stares at you

And sticks to your throat

Where idioms float on feathers’ plummet

It’s a feeling that sinks like cavities

Feet plunging to meet earth beneath our muddied pond

We can’t decide if we’re running or drowning but we’re doing it togeather

Maybe one day I’ll engrave your name in squeaky oak

Or muscle meaning behind your furrowed brow

Maybe our love will grow soft with time

Smooth stones

Beneath sweet water

Worn money

And linty animals

Somehow I doubt you’ll surrender your edge to the tide

Or let me clay over that chip on your shoulder

When I ask your eyes to meet mine

Your studded nose points longingly

at tangled constellations

And nods like salted water on sick pavement

Where will my eyes go when they’re not planted on the rise and fall of your ribcage

Where will my fingers go when they’re unwoven from yours

Mind yourself as I might

Don’t gamble with limbs

Or climb on trees

When you know your hair will be nested and fingers barked

Don’t settle in embers

Or hang your laces on a busy line

Just to feel a router pushback

Call on vanilla and the bulk of healed wounds

Curse the water that brought us here and mend wobbly tables

I’ll miss you when you go,

I’ll call it white knuckling, when sobs bark like mad dogs

And maybe I’ll go too

When a feeling sticks,

Our soles sink like magnets

My heartbeat blocks air from my lungs

As your glance finally meets my lips

And I know it’s the beginning of the end

I’ll fold my tongue like irons on pressed herbs,

Swallowing everything

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Crumbs

I’ll let my heart melt

A coal in your palm

In exchange

You’ll spot me some poison

A backwards glance

The thumbprint of a melting popsicle

Am I scared of blackmail

Or a misrememberance

Or will you

Take a torch to the past

Heaving ice between aimless bows

Dipping into your empty birdbath

Watch me unravel like thread to a backpedal

Nosediving into the carpet

My reflection in your specs

With the weight of soaked morals on song and stale air

My name in your mouth, and we’ll gray before we’re through

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a little off theme but i couldn’t not share

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Don’t fuck your roomate

And in her arms

I’ll turn like a lazy compass

Dreams hung like daisys

Drying in the sun

And pickling in the moon

She reads my face like a clock

And in her bed we mourned dead puppies

Wet with grief

Hanging there with the weight of a teardrop

And the heat of singing oil

I find her face in mine

How the hell did I get here?

My blood curdles into lava and I wonder where the music went

On the night we met we hurled stories like water balloons

You and me are drying roses

And when stems bend like prisms

Wreathing around death and twine

Too sick to be missed

Too heavy to be broken

My hips will swivel like magnets to a tombstone

Air quotes hung- a hole in the universe

She reads my face like a map

As I sigh a cigarette into her pillow

A flickering light in our womby crawl space

The tack of honey

In all this bitterness

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me: why'd u give me an F??

teacher: you haven't turned anything in all semester.

me: but i reblogged the lucky pencil?

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The most hilarious part of italians’ reaction to coronavirus/covid19 has been them stockpiling EVERY SINGLE type of pasta except the PENNE LISCE

which Italians couldn’t bring themselves to buy or eat even during a mass psychosis

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are u a “dont fucking touch me or ill rip ur spine out thru ur throat” traumatized or a “please please touch me i need physical validation to live” traumatized