#Xu Lizhi

[knightofleo]

Chelsea Wolfe | Iron Moon

A dead sun, a pale glow Upon the walls I feign to know We bear no fruit, no flowers, no life And we get sick but never die Become an echo, resounding "let go" My heart is a tomb My heart is an empty room I've given it away I've swallowed the iron moon Walk with me to a place of trust Death will no longer silence us

#chelsea wolfe #abyss #iron moon #Xu Lizhi

[flotaison]

《我弥留之际》 “On My Deathbed”

Xu Lizhi 9/30/2014

我想再看一眼大海，目睹我半生的泪水有多汪洋 I want to take another look at the ocean, behold the vastness of tears from half a lifetime

我想再爬一爬高高的山头，试着把丢失的灵魂喊回来 I want to climb another mountain, try to call back the soul that I’ve lost

我还想摸一摸天空，碰一碰那抹轻轻的蓝 I want to touch the sky, feel that blueness so light

可是这些我都办不到了，我就要离开这个世界了 But I can’t do any of this, so I’m leaving this world

所有听说过我的人们啊 Everyone who’s heard of me

不必为我的离开感到惊讶 Shouldn’t be surprised at my leaving

更不必叹息，或者悲伤 Even less should you sigh or grieve

我来时很好，去时，也很好 I was fine when I came, and fine when I left.

-- Xu Lizhi, 30 September 2014

https://libcom.org/article/poetry-and-brief-life-foxconn-worker-xu-lizhi-1990-2014

#xu lizhi #worker poet #migrant workers #china #poetry

[seaofwakinglife]

"Xu Lizhi was a Foxconn factory worker who committed suicide in 2004 and also wrote poetry. This poem of his begins with one of the saddest and most beautiful lines I have ever read, 'I swallowed a moon made of iron'".

Curious side note: Iron Moon by Chelsea Wolfe was inspired by this poem ♡

#Xu Lizhi #I swallowed a moon made of iron #iron moon #chelsea wolfe #poetry #poem #personal

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 30 September 2014, Xu Lizhi, a poet and rural migrant who worked at the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China, died by suicide at the age of 24. He published poems in the factory newsletter, and on his website, which some friends of ours translated. This is one example: "The paper before my eyes fades yellow/With a steel pen I chisel on it uneven black/Full of working words/Workshop, assembly line, machine, work card, overtime, wages.../They've trained me to become docile/Don't know how to shout or rebel/How to complain or denounce/Only how to silently suffer exhaustion/When I first set foot in this place/I hoped only for that grey pay slip on the tenth of each month/To grant me some belated solace/For this I had to grind away my corners, grind away my words/Refuse to skip work, refuse sick leave, refuse leave for private reasons/Refuse to be late, refuse to leave early/By the assembly line I stood straight like iron, hands like flight,/How many days, how many nights/Did I - just like that - standing fall asleep?" You can read an obituary and more translations of his poems here: https://libcom.org/blog/xulizhi-foxconn-suicide-poetry https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2095168197334986/?type=3

[taxxpayermoney]

《惊闻90后青工诗人许立志坠楼有感》 "Upon Hearing the News of Xu Lizhi's Suicide" by Zhou Qizao (周启早), a fellow worker at Foxconn

每一个生命的消失 The loss of every life

都是另一个我的离去 Is the passing of another me

又一枚螺丝松动 Another screw comes loose

又一位打工兄弟坠楼 Another migrant worker brother jumps

你替我死去 You die in place of me

我替你继续写诗 And I keep writing in place of you

顺便拧紧螺丝 While I do so, screwing the screws tighter

今天是祖国六十五岁的生日 Today is our nation's sixty-fifth birthday

举国欢庆 We wish the country joyous celebrations

二十四岁的你立在灰色的镜框里微微含笑 A twenty-four-year-old you stands in the grey picture frame, smiling ever so slightly

秋风秋雨 Autumn winds and autumn rain

白发苍苍的父亲捧着你黑色的骨灰盒趔趄还乡 A white-haired father, holding the black urn with your ashes, stumbles home.

[groennuuk]

animation Margarita Garcia Alonso

CON TÍTULO 有题 quieres morir y te pones a escribir poemas

Xu Lizhi许立志

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Researchers develop ultra-strong aerogels with materials used in bullet-proof vests

Aerogels are lightweight materials with extensive microscale pores, which could be used in thermal insulation, energy devices, aerospace structures, as well as emerging technologies of flexible electronics. However, traditional aerogels based on ceramics tend to be brittle, which limits their performance in load-bearing structures. Due to restrictions posed by their building blocks, recently developed classes of polymeric aerogels can only achieve high mechanical strength by sacrificing their structural porosity or lightweight characteristics.

A research team led by Dr. Lizhi Xu and Dr. Yuan Lin from the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Hong Kong (HKU), has developed a new type of polymer aerogel materials with vast applicational values for diverse functional devices.

In this study, now published in Nature Communications, a new type of aerogel was successfully created using a self-assembled nanofiber network involving aramids, or Kevlar, a polymer material used in bullet-proof vests and helmets. Instead of using millimeter-scale Kevlar fibers, the research team used a solution-processing method to disperse the aramids into nanoscale fibrils.

Read more.

#Materials Science #Science #Aerogel #Polymers #Kevlar #Fibers #Nanotechnology #University of Hong Kong

[girderednerve]

i liked severance a lot & i am looking forward to season 2 but i do think it is wild to watch it knowing that it was made for apple+ and that apple is implicated in the infamous "suicide nets" situation at their subcontracted factories

something something that kurt vonnegut quote about the effectiveness of anti-war art. anyway read xu lizhi's poetry

#suicide / #severance #yes the suicide nets were at foxconn. apple contracts with them & is responsible for its supply chain #''i am a person. you are not.''

[anotherworldnowblog]

9

ON THE DEATH OF CHIEWELTHAP MARIAR

(the following text was originally published and distributed in the first months 2023 as the final section of Service Notes #2, a zine written and edited by Chicago baristas and published for Chicago baristas and food service workers. This second issue included two personal essays from food service workers, one poem by an ex-barista, stills from Christian Marklay’s “The Clock,” selected poems by the poet-worker, Xu Lizhi, as well as the following journalistic and theoretical essay)

My friends, it pains me beyond expression to inform you that one of our own has fallen. Chiewelthap Mariar, a 26 year old Sudanese refugee and UFCW member at District Local 2, was killed in Guymon, Oklahoma on January 9th. He was murdered in cold blood by police on the shop floor after his supervisor called the cops to the meatpacking plant where he worked. Our union brother was shot dead at work, by the police, and our union representatives can unfortunately do little more than call for a federal investigation. A coworker of Mariar, who was fired for filming Mariar’s final moments, spoke to press:

“The worker claimed Mariar was fired from his job by a supervisor but was told by human resources to finish his shift. The worker said the supervisor who fired him [then] confronted Mariar on the shop floor after he was fired, and police arrived soon after to escort Mariar from the site. Seaboard Foods did… not refute this characterization of the situation. ‘I witnessed the entire thing, from when they started arguing with him until he was shot,’ said the worker. ‘He had a company-issued band-cutter in his hand. When the police got to the plant, the guy was already working, minding his own business.’ The worker provided cell phone footage leading up to and following the incident, where Mariar can be seen… working around other employees and being confronted by officers on the shop floor. The worker claimed employees were told to keep working after the incident occurred. ‘I worked in maintenance. All they had us do was cover the scene with plastic, and we proceeded to finish what was on the production line,’ the worker added. ‘This company fired me for recording the truth they were trying to brush under the mat. They never asked me if I was OK. It was my first time seeing a guy get killed – and then I get fired.’”[1]

Chiewelthap Mariar should still be here. Just like Tyre Nichols[2] should still be here, just like Adam Toledo,[3] and just like Tortuguita.[4] Our union brother, a worker, a 26 year old black man with his whole life before him, was cut down at his place of work while carrying out his assigned duties. His own boss made the telephone call that ended his life. And his union, our union, could not save him. Those workers who witnessed this heinous act didn’t even get the day off. Without the pressure of militant, radical, rank and file self-activity, the union officials can hardly do more than cry out, “Justice!” They are legal entities, state entities, and they have rules they must abide by if they wish to exist the next day. An investigation may come and some restitution pay may too. But if it comes, it will come too late.

In history, especially at its most critical hinge points, the workers are sometimes called to go beyond the limits of their union counterparts. But most of the time they simply want to get by. History is always calling us towards a greater bravery and a higher mode of living together, sometimes more loudly than other times, and yet more often than not we do not heed this call; we often can hardly hear it even when we try. The dire consequences for acting shine with the unmistakable clarity of the present and the promise of transcending that present can only be faintly discerned through the opaque mist of the future. So the workers look away and they finish their shift. And the union officials breathe a sigh of relief. This regrettable fact is not hard for us to understand. This is one side of the union. And these are the conditions of employment in America. We live in a country where you can be shot dead on the job for the crime of holding the tools of your trade. Killed because of a bureaucratic mix up, a Brazil-esque inconsistency in official instruction. And we know that in this country, being caught in such a mix up is all the more unforgivable in the eyes of the capitalist state if you are black.

Higher wages will not stop them from killing us.[5] Legally recognized bargaining power within a single company will not halt global pollution. It cannot stop war. And we are running out of time; we can all feel it. But the union is only hopeless when looked at as an end. This is not an end, but a beginning. The union can be the means by which we discover something about ourselves and about this world: that we are unfathomably more powerful together, that we don’t need the boss, that the new world exists right here in the old; the union can be the means by which we discover all of that, so long as we are open to finding it.

And this brings us to that other side of the union. It is more or less a hack “ultraleftist” talking point to say that the union is a capitalist institution. Anyone who thinks about it can understand that this is basically true. The union facilitates our smoother integration into the capitalist system. But at the same time, it is also the exact opposite. The union is the living embodiment of the cooperation, solidarity, and bottom up power that will become the basis for whatever better world comes next. The union is the form in which we combine our strength to take on the gods of this world; it is one rung in the ladder we build as we prepare to finally storm heaven itself.[6] Our very existence as a union, anytime we coordinate our activity, this is the living proof that a better world is possible. One day, this same cooperation and coordination will be generalized and it will be our only law. So we struggle for our union, even knowing that it will not save us today. We struggle anyway.

We build up strength and we gently nudge our friends awake because now is not a time for sleep. To sleep now is to die and let die. Chiewelthap Mariar was killed by the police at his job, in uniform, on the production line, and was represented in negotiations with his employer by UFCW District Local 2. What would you do if he was one of our coworkers? What would we do? We cannot sleep, we cannot go numb. Some day, perhaps sooner than we think, we will be presented with a choice: turn our heads away and go back to work or stare reality in the face and act with bravery, breathing new life into that dusty, dented, old word: solidarity.

NOTES

[1] Excerpts clipped from a recent Guardian piece: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/20/oklahoma-pork-plant-seaboard-foods-chiewelthap-mariar

[2] Tyre Nichols was stopped and beaten within inches of his life by Memphis Police on January 7th, 2023. He died from his injuries on January 10th. He was a talented skateboarder and photographer.

[3] Adam Toledo was a 13 year old boy who was murdered by Chicago Police on March 29th, 2021. His hands were raised high above him when the police opened fire.

[4] Tortuguita was a 26 year old, queer, environmental and anti-police activist who was assassinated by police in Atlanta, Georgia on January 18th, 2023. They were a militant defender of the forest, a genuine revolutionary, and a loving friend and partner to all who knew them.

[5] Fred Moten: “The coalition emerges out of your recognition that it's fucked up for you, in the same way that it's fucked up for us. I don't need your help. I just need you to recognize that this shit is killing you, too, however much more softly, you stupid motherfucker, you know?” See The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study

[6] Karl Marx referred to the Paris Commune of 1871 as “storming heaven” in his book of working class history, The Civil War In France

[borderepisteme]

They all say

I’m a child of few words

This I don’t deny

But actually

Whether I speak or not

With this society I’ll still

Conflict

Xu Lizhi

(I’ve been rereading the worker-poet Xu Lizhi recently and really dig his style.. its somewhere between the late Bolaño and Mekas.. simple words that invoke concrete images and feelings and perspectives.. except instead of dealing with the everyday life and struggles of vagabond poets, he deals with the conditions of life and work of the people from nowhere who exist all over the world, experiencing different yet essentially similar situations..)

[sympathyforthedevil01]

xu lizhi, un tornillo cayó al suelo

en 3 meses cumpliré 23.

#xulizhi

[acid-gothic]

Poetry springs from an intuition of the insane violence of relativity, but it does not follow from this fact that it is in any sense ‘relativist’ or that it has relativist aspirations. It is not remotely relativist; it is a furious and bloody-minded response to the fact that what it values absolutely is even capable of being relativised. Everything and nothing become for the defensive poet like two differently coloured floodlights that can be switched on and off alternately. Everything is made to appear alternately under their illumination, to light up alternately under these two evaluative headings; the rhythm of the transformation sets the tempo for the protest it gives rise to, crashing away in the chest like a Bloomberg equities monitor on the blink during a stock market plummet. In Xu Lizhi’s ‘The Last Graveyard’, ‘The jig forces the skin to peel,/ And while it’s at it, plates on a layer of aluminum alloy’. In the first line, my suffering is everything. In the second, it is nothing. Everything I am becomes greater under the light in which I necessarily appear as nothing at all, as the most immediately replaceable among an infinity of more valuable production factors, put to work until my skin blisters and my body becomes unsuitable for the part operation that it was employed to perform. It becomes inexorably greater and not less under this light because under it the possibility that everything I have and am and everything that I hope for will be brutally taken from me is blown up and distorted until finally it comes to look like all of my horizons pressing in simultaneously on whatever it is that I am and unstoppably squashing it, densifying it, jamming it more and more relentlessly into just this moment of living expression cut off from the whole life in which we would never have to place on it demands that it could never hope to meet.

—Danny Hayward, "Poetry and Self-Defence"

[smn13]

ho ingoiato una luna di ferro

la chiamano vite

ho ingoiato acque di scarico industriali, moduli per la disoccupazione

la nostra giovinezza, più infima delle macchine, perisce anzitempo

ho ingoiato la frenesia del lavoro, ingoiato povertà e indigenza

ingoiato ponti pedonali, ingoiato vita cosparsa di ruggine

altro non posso più ingoiare

tutto quel che ho ingoiato risale ora per la gola

e sparge sul suolo patrio una

poesia di vergogna

Xu Lizhi

#poesia

[deehwang]

Sumber :

#xu lizhi

[anarchyislove]

I Swallowed a Moon Made of Iron (我咽下一枚铁做的月亮)

I swallowed a moon made of iron

They call it Screw

I swallowed the industrial effluent, orders of unemployment

The youths lower than machines have untimely died young

I swallowed the toil, swallowed the displacement,

Swallowed the overpasses, swallowed the life full of limescale

I can't swallow any more

All I’ve swallowed down are surging out of my throat,

Spreading out across the territory of my country and becoming a

Poem of shame

by Xu Lizhu, a factory worker at Foxconn in Shenzhen, who committed suicide at 24 years old

#Xu Lizhi #poetry #Foxconn #working class #suicide

[puroversorevista]

#poetry #xu lizhi #poem #poema #poesia #poets on tumblr #poesia oriental #literatura #literature #cultura #poesía china #chinatown #puro verso