Thursday, August 17, 2017

What about their rights?

You carry lit citronella lawn lanterns. You wear polo shirts and white kkk hoods and confederate flags.  You strap black helmets to your heads and carry plastic shields and walkie talkies. You wear war paint and swastikas and faded tattoos. Some of your beards are white and frizzy. Many of your crew cuts are combed and greasy. And all of your mouths spit and spew horrific ignorance as you hold out your hands to a dead Hitler and shout,
JEWS WILL NOT REPLACE US! IT'S OUR RIGHT!
JEWS WILL NOT REPLACE US IT'S OUT RIGHT.
JEWS WILL NOT REPLACE US IT'S OUT RIGHT. 

A few days later, I sit and close my eyes and re-imagine your rally... 

While circling the brass statue of your civil war hero, you are all suddenly surrounded by the dead. First, the spirits of the Native Americans murdered by European settlers or displaced and disgraced by American governments walk up beside you, singing their old songs of sorrow. What about our rights? They ask. Next, the ghosts of every slave who died in captivity, every lynched runaway, every innocent person of color killed by cops or angry white mobs stand like a glowing flock behind you, silencing your stupidity with their existence and presence - more human dead than you are alive. What about our rights? They ask. Last, the souls of the Jews and homosexuals murdered by Nazis soar through the sky and float above you, hovering over your heads like a cloud in a gas chamber. What about our rights? They ask. 

You believe in your supremacy, but your entire platform is literal proof that you are not above everyone else, but so very far below them.  

Saturday, August 12, 2017

Charlottesville


Shrill screams, scrambling, hollering,
as the engine of a sleek silver car speeds
into persons, bodies, citizens,
into souls wearing skin:
light skin,
dark skin,
holey pored,
freckled, scarred skin,
shiny soft/ ragged calloused skin,
wrinkled, weathered, lined skin,
teenage skin, thirty two year old skin,
tight scalp skin in caps, kerchiefs and bobby pins,
dangling brown braids and tied back dreadlocks,
red, white and blond locks.
Skin inside cotton, clothing plucked by plows and stitched into denim,
tank tops, blood drenched socks, shorts, skirts, t shirts,
sneakers
slipping on
street dirt,
earlobes, eyelids, elbows,
blistered heels, flailing, flexing muscles,
spotty sunburned skin,
sweaty baby skin,
skinny pale skin,
brown round skin,
wet salty dead skin...
skin is
skin is
skin is
skin -
cells to hold breath and bones and
organs in.

A Wise Friend

A wise friend is akin to a book of old wisdom.  A book of bone and soul and skin. A book that breathes and speaks and eats. A book with a so...