They Stand
They stand;
They stand for water,
meaning they stand for life
They stand for justice,
meaning they stand for all of us
They stand for common sense, and dignity, and basic rights
which means the puffy men of comfy chairs and dollar brains
can’t stand them
Each one of them is a standing rock;
They make a stand we all must eventually make
with muscular courage they are
the voice of the human race
Those who bring firehoses, and tear gas, and rubber bullets ~ they do not stand
They crawl, they limp, they cower beneath power;
like the attack dogs they bring with them, they have been taught to be cruel
by their masters
taught to be mere weapons; fangs, fists
taught to mistake those who love them for their enemy
and those who disdain them for their benefactor
steroids and weight rooms and protein shakes and karate classes and weapons training,
all to mask what their actions betray;
they are puny ~ they do not stand;
they crawl
But, the standing rocks of Standing Rock
understand
and so they stand over
Hymn For Whiteistan
On Red blood, with Black skin
through White plans, for White kin
did we build beloved Whiteistan
Whiteistan! My father's land;
fought and paid for
killed and died for
hallowed Whiteistan
Our foundries? lost
our steel mills? stolen
crimes of a plotting Yellow race;
our borders breached, our prisons swollen
by Browns who need reminding of their place
by Browns who need reminding of their place
Soulless tyrants scorned us
as each outrage stoked our ire;
May they burn! A champion of our cause
has risen - blazed to imperviousness - from the fire
Long may he reign o'er Whiteistan
My father's land,
and his
No scions of the West will wrest
this sovereign land from our strong hands;
the East's elites
will neither mind our soil nor soil our minds;
will neither mind our soil nor soil our minds;
though coasts would pen us in
we yield not;
Whiteistan! My father's land
~ not yours
And though our flag be White
as snow upon our northern borders
surrender not shall we
nor from outsiders take our orders
we pledge our souls to Whiteistan
our Fatherland
our Last Stand
home of the free
Anger Year
In the year the music died
a prince slept
with a kiss
an eagle flew,
already gone
a changeling fell from earth
feeling very still
and all sang, 'hallelujah'
But, angry songs fill our ears in this
extraordinary year;
we said goodbye to minstrels
but a jester claimed the throne
A child, falls into a pit
- where was his mother? -
a magnificent animal
thirty times his size
with arms like tree trunks
seizes him;
'twas one or the other
and no question, really;
have we EVER chosen differently
when faced off against The Beast?
Ascendant, like Pharaohs, atop
a mountain of bison skulls
we look down upon sandpaper rivers
rust red bleeding rivers
to drink is to fall ill;
From whence this plague?
Were Pharaoh's crimes as egregious as our own?
The Nile's god-men suppressed peoples
but we, the Spoiled Brats of Technology
have outraged HER! The one dancing orb
amidst a swirling sea of dark inhospitality
that offers breath, and expression
twirling around a sun we turned away from
Having found her one weakness
her shame, buried deep within her
we gouge at it, feast upon it
fashion totems from it; mock her
could we not obey one simple admonition
though life depends upon it
not to frack with Mother Nature?
Politics;
Two parties, cemented in La Brea
a pygmy rhino suffocated by its own flatulence
and a stag with horns so heavy
it can't crane its head from the muck
scream war cries at each other from
the thick of the pit;
their extinction a formality now -
put them on a postage stamp; might as well
they're done
Meanwhile, humanity
faces off as two camps
Whiteistan vs. Brownistan
hating each other, even killing each other
as if to prove that inside all is red;
mistakes cannot be learned from until
they are recognized as mistakes
seen as folly and passed on as such to the next generation;
but we are not ready
we wear our mistakes like badges
Only radical love - and radical forgiveness -
are what we are called to
only these can lead to yearned-for change
only radical love removes the monster
from the equation
and raises a stance that doesn't scrape and agitate
Love is the answer, but what is the question?
It seems we've forgotten
It seems we've forgotten
or care not
