Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Aimee Suzara

As the incoming administration builds its agenda of attack on marginalized people, on freedom of speech, on the earth itself, poetry will continue to be an essential voice of resistance. Poets will speak out in solidarity, united against hatred, systemic oppression, and violence and for justice, beauty, and community.

                

In this spirit, Split This Rock is offering its blog as a Virtual Open Mic. For the rest of this frightening month, January of 2017, we invite you to send us poems of resistance, power, and resilience.

We will post every poem we receive unless it is offensive (containing language that is derogatory toward marginalized groups, that belittles, uses hurtful stereotypes, explicitly condones or implies a call for violence, etc.). After the Virtual Open Mic closes, we hope to print out and mail all of the poems to the White House.

For guidelines on how to submit poems for this call, visit the Call for Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience blog post. 

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Because Water is Life

By Aimee Suzara

Originally written 10/29/16, in solidarity with the Sioux People and Water Protectors at Standing Rock working to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, inspired by Craig Santos Perez’ poem “Water is Life”

Once upon a time my ancestors lived beside the water

Fishing, capturing crabs from the sea, the fine sand mingled with sweat on their skin

And when I return to water the parts of mine recognize their source

Because water is life

Because water is life I honor the dagat and all of its fishes

And when I look at the ocean I am dreaming my origins

Because the Philippines is an archipelago

And every land is an island, bigger or smaller

Because no land is really dominant or superior or main

Because water is the ilog that rushes

And even when we dam rivers they rise up in a storm

Because water was our first home inside the womb

And water was the first sound we heard when we floated

And water was natural when we learned how to breathe

So as babies we remember how to swim

Because water is the condensation of rain and rain

Is the consequence of water, and we forget then that we end

Where we begin

Because in that forgetting we become like machines and try

To extract another liquid, oil, which helps us fuel other machines

To be bigger, faster and stronger

But we can’t drink oil though we act like we can

But oil kills the water, so our dependence on oil is a killing of water

Because the Sioux and the Water Protectors are guarding the water

In order to stop Oil from being transported by machines

And destroying the river and sacred places

Because the Dakota Access Pipeline is disturbing the dead

And disturbing the living for 7 Generations

Because the police have become like machines

Bearing militarized vehicles and pepper spray

And Water Protectors bear blankets and feathers and prayers

Because the police wear riot gear

And say the protestors are rioting

Because grandmothers and children and horses stand

As they have for centuries to guard the land

Because this very much reminds us of earlier treaties broken

Because this very much reminds us of how the United States was founded

Upon the burial grounds and sacred sites of Native and Indigenous people everywhere

Upon the dead with no respect for the living

Threatening the living with no respect for the dead

Because this is what the United States stands for

Harbingers of death, not protectors of life

Because water is life and life is our birthright

Because this very much reminds me of the colonizing of my people

Because water was used by this government as water torture

Because water was used by this government as an image of civilizing the savage

Because water is the metaphor for washing the culture from our brains

Because water was the gift of our islands and then you took us

Because you saw the water not as life but as passageway for machines,

And guns and ships, and Pacific military bases

Because you did that too in Guam and Hawaii

Because you showed no remorse for those you killed when we fought for independence

Because you used water not for life but for transporting bodies

To provide labor for your machines to serve your dominance

Because water became a graveyard of bodies, a passage of bones

Because you have turned water into a tool of death

But water is life and you need it to live

Must we remind you, over again?

That water is life, and water is life

Because water is life.