Times of shattered glass
herald the approaching dark
Crone of a world war.
At night, soldiers come
children cry out, glass shards of fear
crushed into their skin
If we do nothing--
slaves we become, breathing out
blood drops of a dream,
emptied of promise
held within springtime blossoms
of “a more perfect union”
The words, the words--
They rattle in my head,
louder than
the tail of a snake,
louder than
the breaking of stacked billiard balls,
louder than
the concussing jack hammer on a city street--
too much noise to hear distinctly
what must be written,
what must be said, screamed
into the foul fiery smoke-filled air
One word, one.
Just one, larger than the others,
louder—
settles against my skin,
a lash of fiery noise,
burning, burning deep--
betrayal--
burning away tiny scars
of other betrayals
a lifetime ago
This wildfire of betrayal
burns away
soul held beliefs
of common good.
Six bodies,
Six bodies—
Fifteen minutes later,
six bodies forgotten
in the collected dust
of memory upon the world.
Six souls passed away,
imprisoned from the light of God.
The sky shrinks away
from the edge of earth
as the six join 1139.
I did not know any of them.
Not one soul.
I did not have a friend, a neighbor,
a brother, a sister,
a father, a mother, a cousin,
an aunt, an uncle,
no son, no daughter
among them.
But I mourn them,
as if I knew them,
as if they were family.
I feel the empty spot
they left upon leaving the world.
You ask me why I feel their loss so…
My answer—because I am human.
In return, I ask…Why do you not feel it so?
No answers found
in the mocking caw of crows
who laugh at humanity.
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.
Fear and greed migrate
Cuts a burn path ‘cross land
point blame at blameless
Burning hate migrates
No history lesson learned
decade to decade
Did all Gods migrate?
leaving us to destruction
in abandonment?
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.
It cannot happen here, not in this place, not in this age-- Until a six-year-old boy is stabbed to death. In Grand Central station, a man punches a woman in the face, telling her it is because she is Jewish. It cannot happen here, not in this place, not in this age. It cannot happen here, not in this place, not in this age. Yet on a bus, a man screams, “We don’t wear that in this country!” to a Sikh teen about the turban of his faith. A university student calls for the murder of his Jewish fellow students It cannot happen here, not in this place, not in this age. It cannot happen here, Not in this place, not in this age. Yet swastikas are spray painted on a Jewish business. In 2018 on October 27th, A madman entered The Tree of Life Synagogue, spewing hatred and shooting eleven dead. But no. It cannot happen here. Not in this place, not in this age. Yet remember, Executive Order 9066, those rounded up and sent to camps here in this place. Look hatred in its devil face, see if you still can believe, still convince yourself— It cannot happen here. Not in this place, not in this age.
I’ve revised and reworked an earlier piece written in 2017 as a response to the terrorism of Hamas and the war Israel has declared. It seems to me that this slaughter by Hamas and the retaliation that Israel is now forced to take cannot be what any God wants. Surely, it is not what the Palestinian people or the people of Israel want either.
The blood of children falls as rain on Holy ground. The blood of their parents chasing after as if to save it, stopping it from concreating the land to evil born of old hatred as the world, emptied of all care, watches. No uprisings. No shouting in the streets as this blood rain of innocents falls, flooding the silent world as nations watch, hands bloodied in pretense of helplessness before turning their backs. The seven descend. Each with wings spread enough to fill a house. Shalom upon their tongues. Throughout the compass points they search to find all the gnawed bones, the muscles and sinew, the heart and entrails torn with teeth of hate. And once the seven gather all the tiny bits, With flaming swords used as needles, they try to stitch all humanity’s bloody bits into one thing well knit. Neither their swords, nor spirit of their breath have the power to seal the meat and sinew to bone. And then they know-- those who showed no mercy would be given none. Their heads hang-- Inshallah upon their lips as they ascend. Their flaming eyes weeping tears of fire as they see the red rider striding across the land. It is then the seven know humanity’s avarice and hate had broken the fourth seal. Maa shaa’Allah a whisper of smoke within their throats. From the seven sets of fiery eyes, their tears of fire stream Retzon ha-el across the night sky.
Women, we are tortured by our hair.
It is never what we want.
It never obeys our desires.
A mischievous heathen,
it laughs at our attempts
to bend it to our will.
We grow it, cut it, dye it,
curl it, straighten it,
treat it with carcinogenic chemicals
to beat the mischief making
blasphemer into submission.
All the while, it laughs at us
as our enemies, humidity and wind,
destroy in seconds
the cooperation
we thought we’d earned
with our torturous machinations.
Hair:
Too thin,
Too thick,
Too curly,
Too unruly,
Too straight,
Too limp,
Too frizzy,
And the color—
Too…too…too…too-too little
and too-too much of everything—
Never exactly as it should be.
It will not follow our will.
Pull it into a ponytail.
Shove it under a baseball cap or a sun hat.
Why don’t we just shave our heads
And let it be done?
This woman’s crowning glory,
a temptation enough to make angels fall
from the heights of heaven at the sight it,
necessitates head coverings and wigs for women,
according to some.
After all, who wants it to rain angels
into the streets of the world?
That’s a sight I wouldn’t mind seeing
since I’ve got questions for those angels.
For one, why do women have to help angels
control such lusty impulses?
But I digress as I begin my morning battle
with my own head of hair.
II
I grasp this beast of kinky
curls that sits upon my head,
attempting to tame it into submission.
First, the wire brush stretching strands
straight as concentrated hot air
dry the water from the beast.
Slowly the taming comes.
Finally dry, frizz left there,
making me aware who the boss really is.
I break out my next weapon
against this frizzy beast:
The flat iron.
And while it heats,
I tune the speakers to a podcast
about the missing women of Juarez.
Sectioning my beast hair as I listen
about women missing,
women found dead,
women to whom no one paid attention
because
they were
women, girls
because
they were
brown
because
they were
poor
women, girls
brown
poor—
The things
that do not grab attention
that fade away in the media
easy to say of these—
They ran away.
With a boyfriend, likely.
Oh, she’s a drug addict.
Who knows where she went?
And on I go to straighten another section
Of hair with my hot flat iron.
My beast neatly tamed.
I think it would be easier to braid my hair into rows.
Decorating the braids with small beads,
a bead for each missing woman,
a bead for each murdered woman,
a bead for each missing, murdered, indigenous woman of color
in this land, across the globe.
Each tiny bead
with a name microscopically etched
and then braided into my hair
as beads of grief,
a bead for each woman, each girl—
If I could then even lift
my bead heavy head
like the mothers who carry
sandbags of grief searching
the world for daughters
gone missing—
what could I, one person, do?
The world spins on.
Despite the burden of beads,
these beads braided
into the fabric of motherhood
across the globe
for girls gone missing,
girls glanced at, ignored
by a society that sends up invisible prayers
then turns forgetting what it deems valueless,
girls marked by the violence of poverty,
Then I think of 22 year old, Mahsa Amini.
dead in the twisted irony
of morality police custody for a hijab violation.
I should shave my head in solidarity
with the women of Iran
who protest.
But what could I, one person, do?
Would beads or a shaved head here make a difference?
Would anyone know the meaning?
My neck cannot bear the weight of braids with beads enough for each woman.
My bald head would not be understood as sign of solidarity.
So I send out my chicken scratches of a poem
into the world, and I choose to leave it as it is,
Untamed and ugly.
My daughter, mine,
though you live
thousands of miles away
sleep safe, my daughter mine.
Though you live
where a man caresses a weapon of war as he plots
to drill death into hundreds as he walks down a street,
sleep safe, my daughter mine.
Though you live
where freedom should ring
yet a state ties you hostage in righteous ropes of religion,
sleep safe, my daughter mine.
Though you live
where you must sell your body
to feed your children,
sleep safe, my daughter mine.
Though you live
where no one, no law will protect you
from the monster who sleeps beside you,
sleep safe, my daughter mine.
Though you live
where you have no voice,
where you die in the custody of morality police,
where you can disappear with no outcry to echo behind,
sleep, sleep safe, my daughter mine.
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