It is pointless to resist power – the brea(d)th of powerlessness is precisely the point
The only truth is non-truth & the whole of it is untrue, therefore full of holes
The macro is but the sum of individual micros – even plus odd is forever odd
The foremost poet wrote perhaps the greatest poem ever written, but it was untrue
There is no alternative, no such thing as society, except when you forget, except when you don’t
How does a poem resist?
When you say thrush
It removes the palpable green from your
Hooved beginnings
Why does a poem resist?
If the chances taken
Are multiplied by its hoofsteps, you get
Nothing as quotient
Who does a poem resist?
Ice, palindromes, hoovicles
And clarified ribosomes, mainly because
Structure is a myth
Poet as indigenous
as tenacity is indigenous
does it grow with the river or will the seed of word become song?
The dwelling is indigenous
there are as many indigenouses
as there are houses nestling the words that hint of becoming song
The poem is indigenous
to the steel that is fraught with love
that burned as seed that was housed in spring to become song –
The rich earth shall speak
soft tears & we who know
earth, between us, we shall
drink both that year & this.
We shall sit here, softly
Audre Lorde, from “If you come softly”
Beneath two different years
And the rich earth between us
Shall drink our tears.
– it is transformed as it is birthed: as it becomes it is no more
– master’s tool no more, but the inch that peels off the foot
– it reverses the voyeuring oppressor’s gaze; it has survived by looking back, unrepentant, unfazed
– build your ivory tower upon it, and it spits it out, whole
– it is the silence that gnaws, knows
How far is this sun from your
winter’s moon? take this
parchment of dust & leech it with
the shadow’s ink leech
it with another white while the
eyeness of this red lingers –
If greed were a pencil would its
nib pontificate? & the bleed of
its hue: would it fill the room
with chance or would the
ooze serve only as passion to
delay the evitable forever?
Tremor is amused at nothing
as the chimes roll
Rumor is coffin it is mist
as too the daybreak
Ardor is one with the weave
as this gift unveils –
What brews below is symptom, nay act
it follows that the feather is free
Communion with the people ceased to be a mere theory, to become an integral part of ourselves
– Che Guevara
What haunts below is wish, nay will
it follows that the word will suffice
The wise have no mind of their own, finding it in the minds of ordinary people
– from the Tao Te Ching, transl. by Ursula Le Guin
When the river speaks you listen you
tend to the bend of the river they say is pain as it tends to
the shadow you hark to the sense of
the shadow
at the heart of the river –
true is the cardboard box true too
the hunger &
the pigeon, now
dead
But the fellah, the unemployed and the starving do not lay claim to truth. They do not say they represent the truth because they are the truth in their very being.
– Frantz Fanon, from “The Wretched of the Earth”
Sweet Sally took a cardboard box,
And in went pigeon poor.
Whom she had starved to death but not,
For lack of love, be sure.
– Gwendolyn Brooks, from “the ballad of the light-eyed little girl”
The Task
Some dust to be sure, some nails I will bring, we shall nail the dust to wind –
Doubt
Can you will your shadow into being stone
And will it rain when the stone turns color?
Prayer
I’ll think up some fire, you bring your clay, and pray earth to give us song –
Blue as the tip of a flame that
teaches each morning how to be born –
Red as the warmth of a love that knows only
the murmur as friend and the roar as god –
Violet as the eye of a wolf looking out for kin
not knowing whether the time is right –
To the sun I say my greetings as I did the day before
to the sun’s
memory can I recall which sun I bore witness to?
whose warmth
is like my own, cradled in the same lava that burns
every sun
which looks like my own can I bring that sun to you?
I am preparing myself so that I might remember the teachings of my grandfathers. I would like to give these teachings to you. I believe that, together, we can begin the journey back to find what many of our people left by the trail. This will be a journey to rediscover a way of life that is centered on the respect for all living things. It will be a journey to find the center of ourselves so that we can know the peace that comes from living in harmony with powers of the Universe. I do not believe in isolating myself in the memories of the past. I do believe that with the teachings of yesterday we can better prepare ourselves for the uncertainties of tomorrow.
– Edward Benton-Banai: “The Mishomis Book: the voice of the Ojibway”
