Acts of Service
end of season love
lays next to me in bed, asks
would i kill
a convicted murderer for 5 million dollars?
as simple as the push
of a button, no blood
on my conscience, no consequences.
a beating heart
will still. that’s all.
a life will end. lives end every day,
if by other hands. that’s all. we too are dying.
a question of morality, of violence,
of deeds deserving penance & deeds deserving compensation.
a question of life under capitalism, with clear
/cut ideas of what constitutes crime &
who pays for which transgressions.
a question of these end times.
o what we’ve been known to do
for a little
fucking
money.
o what we’ve been known to do
to survive.
but I want us to dream bigger, darling,
beyond punishment & capital & how the two tie together,
of a world where the conviction of the cops & the courts
hold no real weight, because we recognized the power
held in our collective pickaxe
& chipped away at the cracks of the foundation
until the whole sick structure
came crumbling down,
& we considered it an act of love, not one of labour.
would I kill, baby?
name the fucker.
woody allen, weinstein,
acting presidents & prime ministers the world over,
zuckerberg, the clintons.
I would do it for free,
with my bare hands.
I would sharpen the guillotine
for elon musk, for the specific strain of evil
that hides behind its institutions — the banks, the landlords,
esteemed members of the board and council,
the boss men, the debt collectors, the border guards,
the politicians paid off by corporate entities, rifle associations.
I would arm myself & my community, &
I would capture jeff bezos in the crosshairs, &
I would pull the trigger even if that alone cannot save us, &
I would consider a good day’s work to be its own reward,
for the love of you &
the love of me &
the love of us all.
Emma Tulloch
Emma Tulloch is unemployed and not quite comfortable calling herself a "writer" yet. Find them online @emmaelizabetht.