winds carried the dusty remains
of a nation across the land
burying bleeding women
in breeding graves
dug by their slave masters
who thought to teach them
of their homespun place
woven in a tapestry
of chains
the remains devoid
of time’s progressive thread
that once contained
something more
than the prison
of being named property
Nonsense things of twisted rhetoric
hang around the neck of a nation.
Words braided into twisted doctrines
of red and black and white.
Hatred fought so long ago
blended into now
with a new pandemic
in the wake
of aberrant dreams.
Here where truth once
swayed and danced,
offering humanity
a grand romance
of belief in a thing
the world had never seen--
Golden rules made real.
We knew our daughters and sons
would serve as the sacrificial lambs
to keep our rules golden
for all generations to be free.
Though freedom be washed
in the blood of our lambs,
we still believed
in the grand romance--
And oh, how we did dance
For over two hundred years.
Then the roped nonsense came,
tarnished the shine of our romance,
interrupted the rhythm of our dance.
The twisted rhetoric strangled us
as a new sickness spread.
No ease given; no treatment sought.
Pockets lined with gold
more important than golden lives.
Hatred and apathy listened
to the new prophet,
who said they were right--
Everything wrong was
the fault of others:
The poor in spirit are just lazy.
Those who mourn make excuses.
The meek are just weak.
Those wanting righteousness want it all free.
The pure in heart want to give your gold away.
The peacemakers don’t want us to be strong.
Then the new prophet claimed he was the persecuted one,
promising vengeance for his own sake.
His apostles believed his sermons,
proclaiming him their chosen one.
Order is all,
He said.
Law is all,
He said.
He would teach them
by putting all people
in their rightful place.
Justice lay raped,
bloody, raw,
beaten and gassed,
in the streets
as his disciples cheered
while the petty false prophet smirked,
holding a Holy book.
Re-forge the chain of Liberty’s shackle,
he ordered.
Then Truth
stopped swaying,
stopped dancing,
offered us nothing,
flames of romance dying.
After listening to the rhetoric of various politicians, I believe times have grown ever more dangerous to democracy no matter how much those same politicians claim to be defending it. I’ve revised and retitled this piece which I first wrote and posted the night before the 2017 inaugural and titled If They Come. However, I owe a huge debt to Martin Niemöller (1892-1984) who wrote “First they came for…” Often this quote is mistakenly referred to as a poem. Niemöller often spoke of his own complicity with the Nazi regime in its early years by his inaction and not speaking out, especially when it came to the persecution of leftist political party members with whom he did not agree. However, after too many disagreements with Hilter’s policies, Niemöller was imprisoned on July 1st, 1937, and was not freed from the concentration camp until 1945. There are various versions of his famous quote as Niemöller changed the list of victims depending upon the audience to whom he spoke, but his message is clear: Silence and inaction equals complicity. If we are silent, we too are guilty. We must not be silent.
Source information courtesy of Holocaust Encyclopedia
They’ve come before. Remember history. Remember the millions, the thousands, the hundreds-- totaling seventeen million. And yet, always, they come. Different times, different places. Always leaving behind traces of their strange bitter fruit. They are poised, preparing, ready to come. Some of us remember, state the parallels, recite the historical, are laughed at as the hysterical. The majority, sigh and say– They come not in his name for they wear not the robes of the arcane, burning crosses straight, painting crosses twisted. Some forget, leaving voices unraised. Some simply care not, since they come not for them. Yet, we must remember-- Since, in the end, they are coming for us all. Darkness imprisoned for years revels and romps now freed from sanctions, freed from society’s guilty tears. They are coming for the immigrant ones to part them from jobs no one else will do, leaving a river filled with razor wire and shouting, “Build a wall. Build a wall.” I will raise my voice, “Build it around me as well. For I, too, believed the words inscribed upon Liberty.” They are coming for all the women who do not walk 72 steps behind, chaining them to males who must approve. I will raise my voice, “I will not walk into yesterday. I will not let you make any daughter a handmaid.” They are coming for the Jewish ones, pinning yellow stars, creating gas chambers, I will raise my voice, “Take me with them too. For I too, am a Jew.” They are coming for the Muslim ones, planning to kill the Geneva Refugee, with their unproven facts, shouting, “Terrorist. Jihadist.” I will raise my voice, “Take me with them too. For I also pray to the God of Abraham.” They are coming for the darker ones, with ropes and whips and epithets from the past, shouting, “White Power, White Power.” I will raise my voice, “Bring enough to kill me too. For I have the same red blood as my siblings you seek to kill.” They are coming for the transgender and queer ones, with fists and broken bottles and shouts of “Freak.” I will raise my voice, “Beat me as well. For I am sure to upset you by the bathroom I plan to use.” They are coming for those who love differently with researched plans of electric shock to convert, all therapeutic to change, of course, or with hands dripping violence and shouts of every demeaning word we ever heard. I will raise my voice, “Beat me. Take my rights so recently given, though long denied. Never will I lose my dignity again in silence. For I hid among shadows much too long. Now, I, too, live in the sun, Proud of who I love, and I will not go away. I remember we are neighbors, each of us, brothers and sisters in God’s eyes.” When you come for one, you came for us all. All you deem different, dangerous to your thinking, we make you uncomfortable, but we give you something-- Someone, something to blame. But after you have come for us all, bound and bloodied us as best you can, taught your school children the different are to blame, worthy of nothing but your hate, allow our resistance, without striking, without killing, no sling shot will we need to shatter the crystal facade of patriotism you fashioned to cleverly hide away your destruction of democracy and all your injustices. Then the world will see the monster of fear and greed you are and your destruction of democracy. On the day of God’s light, perhaps you will look beyond skin, beyond abilities and disabilities, beyond roads to God and ways of worship, beyond gender and orientations, beyond your own fears and needs, and then see the human heart is born with weakness in hate and greed with strength in justice and love all in equal portions. What will matter most, when each heart lies dissected, splayed open, bare, before its maker, is which portion we allowed to atrophy and die, and which we sought to exercise, strengthen and increase in size.
Anger paralyzes,
I search for words—
Pour what I feel
Into them—
But my anger
Melts them,
Turns them molten metal,
Defiant to the forms,
The constraints,
The molds I attempt
To use to shape
This gob of white hot liquid metal
Into meaning
For feelings
Overwhelming me.
Paralysis crushing,
Submission—
It is what they want—
Make us heavy once again
With chains and shackles,
Place and close the Master’s padlock,
A designation of second class,
Something much less than they,
Round our necks once more,
Making of us an example,
So others live in fear
Of what they come for next
And so acquiesce—
Staying silent, eyes lowered,
Hoping to escape notice
By allowing them to feel smug and safe.
My anger burns bright white stripes,
Others will not die bleeding the red.
Remember the stars provide the light
Of what we know is right.
We will not live on our knees
Or on our backs, being beggars
For shredded scraps
Of what is the promise of our nation.
Brevity of years
Right, paid in blood + death, destroyed
Fiction drips history
Brevity in 12 words
Spring threatens to melt into us. Summer follows soon enough. Birds will return, seeking seeds and worms, Building nests for the young to come. Will the birds remember the songs they sing? Songs of summer, songs to mate? Flowers will emerge, warming their petals And leaves under a brilliant sun. Will they remember how to open Their blossoms? Will they remember how to dress themselves In glorious color? How can the birds or flowers remember When the world walks a tightrope Over the abyss And sunflowers may never grow again Tall enough to bow their heavy heads to God?
High in the air,
Buffeted by the strong winds,
Yet navigating the narrow beam
With a grace and strength of Baryshnikov
Or the great Nureyev
As I, his audience awed by his performance,
Stood and watched,
Wondering if everyone who looked
Could see this man’s artful grace
As he seemed to defy all laws of gravity,
Bending to hammer,
Leaping to rise,
Prancing to walk.
Then bending once again,
Hammering, rising, walking.
Never thrown off balance
By the winds or heavy hammer
Or the weighty leather tool belt,
Carrying the long nails off to the side.
Who else saw the grace and strength
In the rhythm of the dance
This man did perform
In the building of that house—
A dance that held something,
Some paternal element of David
As he danced entering Jerusalem—
How many would see the beauty in the performance of his work?
How many would only see a Hispanic male and question his legal status?
Dreams came,
Dancing for a time
While arrogance grew.
We were better, best–
With nothing left to prove
Glorious above any others–
God’s chosen led by the chosen one,
Or so they claimed
While people died in the streets.
We turned our fingers orange with Cheeto dust,
Stuffing our mouths,
And didn’t care who died.
It was all for our entertainment, anyway.
We watched democracy die
With Lady Liberty and Justice
Beaten bloody in the streets.
But hey, Walmart had toilet paper and Doritos–
And that’s what really mattered.
We screamed about white, black, blue
Red, and all the rainbow colors
Until our screams and colors bled
Into midnight blackness
Then the lights went out
When God’s Grace got up and left.
The Lady went dark,
feeling the decline.
The dawn trembled,
as the power of the mother raised
a sisterhood united.
While the capricious one
and his band of merry fools
turned tiny hands
to the magician’s tools
of distraction and deflection,
whipping their devout disciples
to a rabid, foamy hate,
ready to trample their different siblings.
Thus, the mother within the sisterhood
and a faction of the brotherhood
joins them to rise,
persisting in resisting
to protect a nation
for the next generation.
The once silenced sentiment
Finding voice in our modern age
Now screams in rage:
BUILD A WALL
WHITE POWER
MY PRESIDENT SAYS WE CAN KILL YOU NOW
GET OUT OF MY COUNTRY
And on it goes
Until an absence of color
Signifies ownership
Of Justice whose scales were sold
And tore off her blindfold,
Of Liberty whose anger more than scorched,
That book of law before that torch
She turned and hurled into the Caspian
To douse the betrayed flame.
Robes torn, heads covered in ashes
Justice and Liberty now sit on the ground,
Crying out:
With headstones overturned
And threats to Abraham’s schools,
How long before another night
Of broken glass?
With two now dead in Crescent City,
How long before the crosses burn
As the noose is placed round
The necks of Nubians
How long before the crosses twist,
And on them, shepherds are tied
And left in the cold to die, crucified?
When did the colors of our flag turn:
Red, White, and Black?
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