the words & the bees

1. this is the interregnum, these here are the symptoms
2. this is the era of the warring states
3. the coefficient of injustice is two minutes to midnight
4. a bent arc of history is not a broken arc
5. the dream of the butterfly will connect the words and the bees
—
1. “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear” – Antonio Gramsci

2. The era in ancient Chinese history when Lao Tsu and Chuang Tsu, the two seminal Taoists, expounded.

3. “It is still two minutes to midnight” – The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists – The Doomsday Clock

4. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” – Martin Luther King

5. Chuang Tsu’s Butterfly Dream parable

The moon remembers

Returning in her blood, the
moon remembers which

near star is no more, and
it sinks its shade again,

builds up the root of the
mountain as it climbs out

of yet another shadow.

—
Here is Muriel Rukeyser’s poem:
Martin Luther King,
Malcolm X

Bleeding of the mountains
the noon bleeding
he is shot through the voice
all things being broken

The moon returning in her blood
looks down   grows white
loses color
and blazes

…and the near star gone—

voices of cities
drumming in the moon

bleeding of my right hand
my black voice bleeding

Justice and Joy

Man’s history is waiting in patience for the triumph of the insulted man – Rabindranath Tagore
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice – Martin Luther King

I
Arc bends towards, bends away from, and then
towards: there is – should be – a trend as it tends
to and fro, as it reaches your innards and pulls
your poor and lustful soul out, lets it breathe in one
more gaspful of joy – incipient, unmindful – as it tends
one more time. This is play? This is play. Just as it
does, it does and is.

II
Nuance is to get it right, just so, in the
Small small. In the stream of wakeful

Error, the nit picking of the shore, the
Tiny nudge, the eastward drift. In the

House of joy there is just the just so
and just not-so. All else is un-just.

III
Justice is either embedded in the act of joy
Or it is the shadow lining the breach that

Decides what must be overcome in order
For the two to be one. At times, the emphasis

Is explicit, needs to be thus, and at times, needs
To be less extroverted, a silent friend, a voice

That grazes the small small, a meekness that
Aims not to overcome but comes over often.