Waxing poetic on thoughts, theory & the times
Performative, superficial.
Bandaid for a gaping wound.
The warriors cried,
the elders cried,
the parents,
the children,
and now Mother Earth cries.
Spirit watches
over children made capable
of atonement,
This day
is an attempt,
Though never enough,
to salve the genocide bled;
Yet
They are unearthing babies,
Children
Who never had a chance,
Against a system we still don’t understand,
That takes and takes and takes,
My human heart hurts,
My sentient heart hurts,
My living heart hurts,
For a wrong far too late to correct,
And as the numbers tally up
Let us not lose sight of the numbers that are really lives,
Of the lives that were not lost
But taken
Stolen,
Genocide in and of our recent time,
And we haven’t learned our lesson,
As we hold stolen children,
This time immigrants in cages,
For being the wrong…
Color,
Creed,
Nationality,
Ethnicity,
Race,
An inconvenience to other plans,
Inconvenience in this land,
Stolen,
Stolen lands,
Stolen children,
Stolen lives
This is war,
Without the name
It’s always been,
The slow erosion of their land,
Of their ways,
Their rituals,
Their families,
Their communities
Their lives
This is war,
Without the name,
Declared through false handshakes,
And broken treaties,
Declared through smallpox blankets,
And stolen children,
This is, was always war
Without the name.
Once upon a time ago
A Pope sat upon his throne
And decreed all that all will condone,
Doctrine of Discovery,
–This land, this people, this wealth “we” now own,
For God has seen that only certain Christians may decide
who is wrong, and who is right,
And black and white,
And red and yellow,
And East and West,
And North and South,
Left and Right,
Carving up the world,
Like a pie,
Deciding who lives,
who dies,
To whom shackles are assigned,
As slaves to God’s domain,
And on and on it goes,
That was then, 15th century,
And still well meaning “explorers,”
And “freedom” fighters get to cut apart the globe,
Causing wounds so deep they never close,
And this is good,
And this is right,
For the Papal Bulls
and now our government tell me so
We must remember their pain
Let not unease make
Discussing, recognizing “Genocide,”
in it’s various forms,
A topic too tough to taste,
It is in our history,
It is in our blood,
It is in our now,
The stories,
The memories,
The fears,
The politics,
Of a present world,
That we now shape,
It is our duty to make right,
As much as we can,
And to be the seraphim,
Watching over,
To keep a new pain
From beginning again
Wake up to the realization
That things are often
Not as they seem,
White picket fences
Are redlined
With a much darker history
Dark like burnt cork
Dark like the black night of masked midnight rides,
But also dark, with stars guiding
Like an underground railroad run,
Our history is our history,
We cannot cherry pick the plot,
But we can from our ends figure out how to continue the story
America was always a complex experiment,
A wild unruly flower
Largely grown from blood and tears,
And blood and tears still water her today,
It is how they are shed that
Makes the difference
Mapping a family tree
Going back centuries
Becomes a test of how much truth
One wishes to open up,
It’s a Pandora’s box of past
That leaves us staring face to face at times
With the sins of the mother and father,
Wondering how amends can be made for past wrong,
When guilt is a well that keeps dredging deeper
But our past is our past
And sometimes the good is not,
Even cannot be recorded,
And our past is still ours to handle,
We are living knee deep in it,
still collecting and paying for the past our own eyes may have never seen,
It was not our place to be there,
But rather to be here,
Being actors, witness to the present,
And reflectors on the past
Watchmen for our now,
To ensure better choices,
The best choices may be made to impact the future,
It is all connected,
And it is our responsibility,
As Americans, as world citizens, as humans,
As sentient beings to ensure we are guided wisely,
By not guilt, or raw anger,
But by complex thought
On what to do with the lessons and emotions evoked from the American past,
in this present,
It is all of our past,
It always has been,
Though history has affected all unequally,
It is our past to take on,
Our past as a present to grapple with,
In order to become closer together as a single entity,
As siblings,
Who can handle reality,
Who can allocate responsibility,
Who can be the e pluribus unum aspired to,
We are a people of all Nations,
It is remembering that which is the challenge,
And truly realizing that
This is
all of our America
She of Letters 