Poems that Speak Out Against Violence and for Embrace - Sir Dancer Anew

If the back & arms you carry riddle with black

spots & marks made by birds who don’t want us here—

I will remind you: There are people who did this before us,

brown & black-spotted, yellow, with rattails,

born from what others did not want & loathed & aimed

to never let belong, & so, we are here today—

the field is wide. We make saliva from root & light.

Our spikelets grow, & do you feel the wind?

       - Joe Jiménez, Smutgrass

Orlando. Dhaka. Istanbul. Baghdad. Medina. Nice. The killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and the murder of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge. This summer, terrible bigotry and violence have rent our global community. The killings must end, and we in the poetry community must contribute in any way we can. As we search for answers to these horrors and for ways to combat hatred and prejudice, we are reminded of poetry’s capacity to respond to violence, to help us regenerate, like spikelets sprouting in a contested field, claiming our public spaces for everyone.

In solidarity with all those targeted at home and abroad, from the LGBT community in the United States to devastated families of Baghdad, Split This Rock is offering its blog as a Virtual Open Mic. Over the next couple of weeks, from July 14 to 28, we are requesting poems in response to and against violence toward marginalized communities. After the Virtual Open Mic closes, we hope to print out and mail all of the poems to Congress and the National Rifle Association. 

***

Consciousness Nests

by Sir Dancer Anew

OUT OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS NESTS

OF THE MAJOR PARTIES CAME THE

THUNDEROUS TRUMPETING FOR REVENGE...

From the back of our minds came the beat-the-crap

out-of cadence so we would feel the overpowering

need to run full force into one another, clunk heads

and get more and more outraged by those OTHERS

with differences... Our one-track minds skittering

down the narrow road of linear logic had us barreling

down the raceway with a swaying cartload of

misapprehensions whipped on by an overbloated

self-important boss in the driver's seat, whipping

into a frenzy a team of whore horses in the form

of conformity to run down "the other."

As tho the truth was theirs and theirs alone, the

one party of partying conformists was trying to run

the other party off track. The second party roared

in de-Light as they snuffed out the candle power

of the other by getting the whole condemnation

nation to judge and criticize, judge and condemn...

Screaming "You're fired!" the party of the first

part, considering that this was war, ran wildly at

the watered down party. But that party was able

to release a water cannon of insults to cool

the ardor of the other...

Soon, getting out from the back of our minds,

the conflict took on form and, larger than mere

energy, took on form that went from only mere

grumbling to the form of a monster of animosity.

Worse yet, starting to identify with the party

of our choice we saw nothing wrong with it taking

on the persona of some big son of a bitch fanning

the flames of war and bitching about the other...

As self-aware creators we had formed a matrix

by envisioning it, pumping it up with some sort

of dull consciousness and sending it out into the

world of form to run roughshod over the others.

DISS THE OTHER, it thought as it stumbled out

out into reality, knocking over restraints and

crushing inhibitions under foot. As just pure

FORCE created by factions of political PHILOSOPHY,

picked up by us schmoes and sent out into the

world of form, all we could to do was watch

our big dumb brutes of political correctness

take a crack at one another...

Their impersonal, unaware state of consciousness

could now only wade out onto the screen of life,

sicced on the other and sock, trying to knock others

because of their beliefs and ignite a BIGGER WAR.

In the microcosm it was our beliefs running into

their beliefs with great angry vigor, going from

shoot-your-mouth-off to just-SHOOT that created

the harsh world around us. And as we continued

to feed them life energy, believing we were the good

knights (good night!), they grew attacking others...

Fortunately there was also a group of little old ladies

in tennis shoes who were also busy building thought

forms, benevolent globs of released consciousness.

These were not violent giants but only built for the

task of disarming with harmony the parties of the

first part so they would stop creating monsters of

animosity. They were assigned to push our aware

nests back into the place so they couldn't be birthplaces

of the demons of divisiveness. The Political

Polarities could no longer suck us into their

vortexes of sleazy schemes and caustic

causes because the Mother of All

Fussbudgets was on their case.

We became aware of where

our distaste for THE OTHER

is coming from...