anyways im radicalized now

I’m not funding a war 
if I pretend the money 
in my taxes are only going 
toward the roads that 
are actively collapsing. 

            Did you hear about the soldiers 
            who stole all of those tractors? 
            Did you hear the company 
            that makes those tractors, 
founded in a country not “fighting” in the war, 
            was able to brick the tractors 
            before they were at all functional? 

There are in-built kill switches in our devices. 

Think about your debts and 
            how much they weigh. 

            US company sends a shipment of bricks 
            equal to the weight of the hard drives they develop 
            to Singapore because 
they can get away with it. 

            Do you think if the bulldozer used 
            to build the Killdozer was an American make 
            it would have been stopped before 
            it was rendered inert too? 
Maybe the make made the autonomy possible. 

I’m not funding a war, 
            I’m in one. 

There’s no recourse to repair 
what we own within legality. 
            Amazon acquires OneMedical healthcare, 
            Amazon sells medical information to the police. 
It hasn’t happened yet but 
            the Ring Doorbells send footage 
            to the police without the consent 
            and the knowledge of the “owners,” 
and who makes the doorbells? 

User on twitter finds out the company 
            that they got their printer from 
            can disable its functionality from afar 
            because their debit card had expired. 
A friend can have their CPAP machine
            forcibly taken away from them 
            if they aren’t using it “enough.” 
John Deere pioneered the addition of remote 
            kill switches being installed in technology 
            and now the idea of one being installed 
            into a pacemaker is not 

            so far off. 

Rendering a piece of technology inert 
            is called “bricking” it. 
            Are you excited to talk to a friend and 
            because of the status of their debts 
a brick is weighed into their body? 

Think about what you owe 
and how much it weighs, 
think about what you give away 
            and where it goes, think about 
            how much choice you really have, 

if you have choice at all. 
            Marvin Heemeyer’s choices were diminished 
            until there was nothing left but to build Killdozer 
            but even so he was allowed to build it 
            without the only options he had left becoming bricks. 

It’s called a siege when you decide 
to wait for your enemy to run out of resources. 
            It’s called “scorched earth” to destroy anything 
            that might be useful to whomever you’re fighting against. 
            Who was the first brick at Stonewall? 
We got past Act Up and now you can’t get 
a monkeypox vaccine unless you can prove 
you’re a gay man who has sex with other men. 

            Did you know you can be arrested for sodomy still? 
            Did you know some John Deere tractors only work 
            if the same farmer is buying Monsanto approved seed? 

Marvin Heemeyer said “It is interesting to observe 
            that I was never caught.”
            Maybe we will get a justified right to repair, 
            maybe the earth will die before then. 
            Scorched Earth. 

We’re in an overwhelming heat wave, 
we’re in the coldest summer of the rest of our lives. 
They don’t make the tools we need 
            to become autonomous anymore 
            because they can ship us 
            our weight in debts instead. 

            What happens when we learn 
            that we can’t use our refrigerators 
because we’re late on rent? 
            What are you going to do 
            if you’re trying to shoot yourself 
            in the head and the gun won’t go off
because your sold healthcare data 
informed the manufacturer 
that because of severe depression 

the guns you own will become bricked? 

What are you going to do 
when you can’t do anything else 
but lower the DIY armor 
            over the caddy of your killdozer, 
            only to find that it’s been rendered 
            a series of bricks? 

            “It is interesting to observe 
            that I was never caught ... 
            somehow their vision was clouded” 

Copyright © 2024 by aeon ginsberg. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 17, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“I am aware of the state of our world. How could I not become radicalized against it?”
—aeon ginsberg