Today,
Lesser men sang a song of worship
and genuflected like syphilitic nymphs
to the ascension of a lesser god,
The Fetid Cow of Greed
crowned with the ferns
of the Order
rising with the storm clouds
of a broken nation’s ignorance
to clap thunder
and cast flames
on truthtellers
strangers
and the starving
so the White Church could scream, “hallelujah!”
but We do not burn!
Pay for your hunger
Pay for a roof over your head
Pay for your life
Year after year
The price tag for basic rights
Keeps increasing
Pay for your transport
Pay for the cold
Pay for your life
Healthcare is expensive, life is expensive
When you can’t afford it – die
What happens if you can’t afford that, too?
Pay for your pain
Pay for having a disease
Pay for your life
Cost of living: unforgiving
You are Capitalism’s villain
Pay with your life
– After “Final Portrait of Charles and Holly Wright” Photographed by Holly Wright
My pillow is forever furrowed by worry,
so it folds under wild hair.
His lie flat, tufts of hair to
sweat beads on his forehead.
His elbows carve holes into the quilted comforter covering a clean set of sheets,
belt remains clenched to torso and blue ink pen engraves his chest.
My hands pursed together, I let my fingernails prod the blue veins of my hands,
my necklace neatly arranged under my day clothing.
Creased leather work shoes meet the end of our bed.
Heeled ankles cross and remain in bliss above the flowered quilt.
Our bed, our lives,
our sleepless nights, our pencil skirt and pleated pants.
Bread and circuses—
the stage they’ve set for us,
where the crowds are fed,
and the spectacle blinds our trust.
We’re all victims of random circumstance,
born into battles we never chose.
But when we rise to fight for change,
they rewrite our story,
ruin our names,
turning our heroes into foes.
Bread and circuses,
a feast for the eyes,
while the hands that feed us
dangle our lives like lies.
Like clowns on a stage,
we throw pies at each other—
faces full of filling,
blinding you and me.
The ringmaster made them all with deception—
delicious, but sugar-free.
Distractions sweet,
so we never see—
the chains that bind us,
the price of being free.
They’ll make us dance,
they’ll make us cheer,
while they steal what we hold dear.
And in the silence of our screams,
they offer bread,
and sell us dreams.
American humanity has spoken
their votes a napalm venom
spat mercilessly at their own wives
and daughters
we will not forget your cruelties
even when you beg
for forgiveness
the women and the marginalized
you claimed to love, cherish, protect
will not hear you
over the roar of our blackest inevitability
A damaging doctrine,
disguised as the truth.
They are only lies told
to keep you in line,
to keep you under their control.
They are only lies told in order
to hold you down,
to keep your soul from
being delivered into freedom—
to have you clutched in their
greedy hands, a treacherous power.
They do it to keep you in your chains.
This is a power that smothers,
a power that stops your heart,
rots your mind,
starts your wars.
Don’t ever believe them,
not ever, not one word of it.
The world’s doctrines
are not your truth.
Where does yr megalomania come from?
The central part of the mindset, hmm…
Almost every Gate of The Kingdom
It must be harder to think & feel
If such tyranny would allow me to speak
That could burn u alive from both ends
Or maybe it would incite insurrection
Like Zen gardens turned stormy
So how is it u fell out of step with life?
Making friends & enemies the same
If u don’t want to think about that
Live yr life of troubled sorrow
I met a traveler from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of gold
Stand in the desert…Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a nasty visage lies, whose sneer,
And fake-tanned face, and poof of orange hair,
Tell that its sculptor well those admonitions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless
things,
The hand that beat them, and the greed that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Donald Trump, King of Things,
Look on my words, ye Mighty, and declare!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of National Parks, plundered and bare,
Barren derricks stretch far away.
The river does not ask permission
when it carves a valley into the earth,
nor does it wait for us to remember
the names we once gave it.
It sings in the voices of silt and minnows,
its vowels smooth as skipping stones.
Somewhere, an otter presses its belly to the current,
a heron angles its beak toward sky,
and a tree lets go of its leaves,
not in grief, but in trust.
We dip our hands into the cold and call it home.
Even now, even after dams and droughts,
it hums through the fault lines of our bones,
reminding us we are never separate.
The river moves, and we move with it.
“I do believe the poets are our modern amazons — riders, defenders, explorers of the loneliest outposts of our kingdoms”
– Audre lorde
“I held eyes with one cop that night/Could taste their fear against my famine/The bloodlust of my silence./Them not knowing/If I was one of those who had nothing to lose or live for”
~Alao Olama-Ya
That blue beast under your body will not save you
in its slaughter, look at him fear
tearful, body weaponed and armored but still
weak under the weight of you in this storm
of rioting bodies. Look
closer, at your reflection in his eye
Is this who you want to be ? Remember
the roots of who you are
Here. Let me hold you
soul in water, mind in sea
feel the ocean in your chest, welling
up through your throat, this is the drowning
the free, vessel-carried people chose over captivity,
You are warrior aren’t you? You are prophecy and ruin
You are storm, disaster, body and will of the amazons
then drop your knife
and pick up your weapon
pillage poetry from every living moment of rage
from the fear in his eyes in this moment & the titanium
music of the blade as it hits asphalt freed from your hand
Èjì.
“Tell me something/what you think would happen if/everytime they kill a black boy/ then we kill a cop/everytime they kill a black man/then we kill a cop”
~June Jordan
“not that he was not strong, but his gentleness/over-ruled the rest & he sang/& he bent & sang half-forgotten folktales/to the child in his arms”
~Diane di Prima
My blade at his throat becomes a feather
I slit it across his throat. It spells
out the first line of a poem
I lean my body heavy into his on the asphalt
my knee on his chest, covering his mouth
and in his ear I whisper
that he’ll never earn enough forgiveness to blind us of this mountain
of bodies still begging for breath
beneath their uniforms
blue blood pooling beneath him
leaking from his ears
I drag my tongue up the side of his neck.
It’s ink.
Listen, I was raised by pacifists, I’ve always been
a pacifist and right now I believe
it isn’t enough.
Look at what they’ve taken from us
and keep
taking from us. Nothing will change
I look at his black face
I hold his gaze, my body pinning him down,
I stretch my arm across the ground
where I dropped my blade
and I slide it gently
into his neck
his eyes
dart around like
he’s looking for
someone, a loved one
to rescue him. and
then the stillness
penetrates me
I drop the blade for the second time
wearing a clean crimson coat
and I
start trembling
and in my chest, I-
a man meets my eyes
he grabs me
by the shoulder
gently
and nods at me
with sad eyes
like he
understands
& then he
continues
rioting
