In this collection of poems from Chicago-based poet, rapper, and Legal Aid housing lawyer (yep) Eric Sirota (who records music under the name Rota) breaks down the socio-economic constructs that have built the modern world we live in. He bitterly dissects the pillars of the welfare system, housing law, US politics and more, all with his own distinct style, flair and venom.
The book begins with a collection of quotes, all of which are fantastic and relevant, but the most pertinent to us in this moment is: “This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice.” – Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Officer Wendell Holmes.
It’s of course absolutely wild to anyone with a soul and/or a conscience that those two things are not indivisible. Anyway, we proceed.
We open with a piece that is extremely self-aware – a recurring theme throughout the book. It quietly marvels at the dichotomy of a seemingly “together” family man (even his speech, in text form, is formatted in a more correct, expected or traditional manner, when compared to Sirota’s) seeking legal counsel from the author, who clearly doesn’t feel equipped to provide it at that moment in time. It’s an agile but at the same time quite awkward and engaging look at the modern impostor syndrome phenomenon.
What follows is a self-effacing, minimal look at the dynamics of power in the courthouse. Much more on this to come…
Then, “The landlord said they smelled weed outside my place and now I have to leave by Thursday or they’ll evict me and my credit will become another fucking ankle bracket”, says the person on the phone.
“I can solve any problem if I think hard enough”, is Rota’s response. No pressure.
As the piece continues, his thoughts are intercepted by a nagging personal matter. To which he applies the same thought process – “I can solve any problem if I think hard enough”. Only, clearly, it’s the balance and the intersection that’s the issue here. One blade sharpens the other. One problem bleeds into the next, like two drops of alcohol ink of opposing colours into a shallow dish of fluid. One red, one blue – they are separate, but they are the same. His therapist calls the racing thoughts a symptom, but he swears they’re a tool, too. It’s all purple.
[Written In Real-Time] is a self-deprecating clusterfuck of a poem. The definition of being caught between a rock and a hard place. On Halloween, at a bar, Sirota is surrounded by vitriol – both external and internal – as he tries to navigate the volatile social minefield and quiet his internal demons. All at the same time. This is followed by the first of several official documents that have been redacted, in part, so that they now portray an alternate message. Initially, an abandonment notice on a foreclosed home has been subverted to read “death robots protect this property, no one is safe”. It’s a chilling dystopian juxtaposition and, perhaps, an eerie vision into the future. (AI will exterminate us all, did The Terminator teach us nothing?!)
This is followed, fittingly but at the same time, somewhat unbelievably (and fantastically), by The Foreclosure Crisis, Explained Through The First 80 minutes of Disney’s The Lion King. It begins with the following: “Everything the light touches used to be ours. Now, foreclosure signs turn out neighbourhoods into metaphors”, and continues tragically in the vein until the end. Which leads us equally bewilderingly to [They] Don’t Really Care If You Cry (after Lil Uzi Vert). Where the author contemplates the absurd juxtaposition of modern SoundCloud rap songs interspersed with PSAs urging people to steer clear of chewing tobacco and ponders the American Dream, capitalism and the ties that bind them.
He goes on to explore Christianity, revisits the concept of the American Dream, pops back into a Courthouse and pontificates on the notion of trying to help a neo-nazi save his home. As a Jewish person, this is especially problematic.
It’s My Job To Fix Things dials up the neurotic self-awareness again as the author examines his romantic tendencies (or lack thereof) and the reasons behind it. As he breaks down his purported fear of intimacy, his findings are as neurotic as they are amusing. You almost feel like you shouldn’t be enjoying it, for it is at someone else’s expense, after all. This is followed by a battle for mental bandwidth between the world’s atrocities (child labour, colonialism, human trafficking) and creature comforts (Domino’s pizza and Die Hard). It reads like a shouting match between the angel and the devil on Sirota’s proverbial shoulders, these two opposing sides vying for priority.
Everyone’s favourite glutton, the infamous Cookie Monster, has a moment of existential dread brought on by the capitalist evolution (or should that be degradation?) of Sesame Street, and Bill Clinton gives a moving (redacted) speech on Welfare Reform (spoiler alert: those affected “face America alone”).
Clarence Thomas (Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States) is DECIMATED (he’s basically a black white-supremisit, for those who don’t know) and we move swiftly on to the threat of nuclear war, a look at the merits of the holiday of Chanukah, some frankly insane American laws, warfare again (this time though the eyes of the “idiot” President Reagan), divorce, Chick-Fil-A and much more
Special shout out to the piece called “Ode (Dis Track) To My Staple Remover) which is pretty ridiculous/amazing and very accurate. And then a few pages later, to round it all off, we end on a poem about the biblical exodus.
The fine balance between heavier-than-heavy subject matter and levity or frivolity (often in the same piece) is what makes this collection of poems really thrive. They’d be good individually. But they’re great together. The tattered thread that runs throughout shows us that, for better or worse, everything is connected.
Continuing the running theme of these unfortunate, bittersweet observations, you can buy this radical collection of politically-charged high-concept and insanely principled poems through the evil-but eminently accessible! – A corporation that is Amazon here. You can also buy it from the publisher, the wonderful Button Poetry, here.
The book features lines pulled directly from Prescriptions – the recent album from Black Rainbow Collective’s The Nocturnals (with Sirota recording under the name of Rota paired with Lucca on the beats). Or should that be that the album features lines from the book? Either way, you can stream it in all the usual places now.
Written by Kinda Grizzly
