We reject the second mother you would give us, reject subjugation of ripped rib bone, accept not the pain from seeking knowledge.
We have borne brutality for the ages, Silent always, In churches, In governments, In streets, And in our homes. Our mouths learned silence, keeping us, at least, alive.
Oh, we were worthy of protection As long as we were your possessions: Your mothers, your daughters, Your sisters, your wives. As long as you owned us And we did as we were told, We lived, perhaps, unbruised.
But the brave have shown us Through the ages and now again They show us another way. We find our voice, Too strident for your ears, But even our whispers Are too strident for you.
You will mock us, Vilify us, this we know. Proudly we wear the mantle Of the first mother, Lilith, the one you deemed An enemy long ago and banished. Her spirit moves us to speak Against the men who take Even our bodies from us. You may beat us, kill us, Force us into marriage and childbearing, Rape us, place weapons into the hands Of the children we bear, Weld the chains of slavery upon us, And laughingly say we asked for it Should we complain.
Yet after all that and more, Our submission you will not have. We will rise like an ocean wave Wakened by a great quake Beneath the sea and drown you With the devastation of your hate.
Soon some of Lilith’s daughters Will march. Some will wait across The Earth.
But Lilith’s mantle Covers us all. The quake is coming. The wave will free us all.
America, we never were a great nation.
Not with the genocide of native peoples, slave auctions
And slavery, Jim Crow, The Trail of Tears,
Japanese Internments, and the KKK.
No, we were never great.
We are always a nation of becoming.
A nation of ideals.
A nation great in flickering moments
Like old news reel footage:
When Harriet led her railroad,
When the suffragettes marched for the vote,
When Rosa would not be moved,
When Martin believed in the one day
Every child would have,
When Edie and Thea showed
Marriage should be defined by love,
Not biological gender.
We are a people of hope, of dreams,
Of knowing life would be better
When we made each other great.
Now, hate ripples from one sea
To another, and neither shines any longer
With Liberty because her torch
Grows dim with this reign of hate.
And there are many who want to forge once again
The chains to her ankles, shackling her in place,
Because they want to keep her,
But just for looks sake. Her mate, Justice, remains
On life support, having been beaten to a bloody pulp
By those who see color, who see gender,
Who see all the women who need
To be put in their place,
Who see a society where Justice serves only
The white Christian right, or rather, where Justice is made
Their slave. No, this is not a great nation.
This is not a great nation
When a leader can bully and spew hate
While the First Lady urges kids
“Be Best” in a limp campaign to not do the same
And few mention the irony.
This is not a great nation.
This is not a great nation
When a leader can urge violence
Against the media, immigrants, those who disagree
And so few carry an outcry.
This not a great nation
Where 18 trans women, 17 of them of color,
Can be murdered within less than a year
Yet our highest court must hear how
Laws do not apply to LGBTQ.
No, this is not a great nation
When so many must blame, exclude, and hate,
When so many must abase another to uplift themselves,
All the while professing Christianity.
Our founders gave us rules of law to make us better than this.
We are not a great nation
Until we realize the American Dream
Doesn’t see color or gender,
Doesn’t see race or religion,
Doesn’t see sexual identity,
Until none of us need to stand on the backs
Of others to feel better about ourselves—
Until we realize the American Dream is freedom and equality
And there is enough for all to go around,
We can not be a great nation.
But the greatness in our nation is this:
That we can be
If we recognize our humanity.
We reject the mother
Born to subservience
of ripped rib bone.
No longer will we accept
Bloody beatings and brutality,
Rape and rage,
Silent,
Powerless,
Fearful.
No longer do we accept this pain
As payment for the sin
Of seeking knowledge.
For millennia, we were lucky to live unbruised
As long as we were your possessions:
Your mothers, your daughters,
Your sisters, your wives.
As long as you owned us
And we did as we were told.
But through the ages,
The brave ones have shown us another way:
To seek the spirit of our true mother,
The one born in the same earth of equality.
So we find her voice and our own.
We speak.
Though you would silence us
With vitriol and mockery,
The brave ones have taught us well;
We will never be silent again.
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