Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Reuben Jackson

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. 

***

What Are You Prepared To Do?

by Reuben Jackson

You cannot:

Task force

Facebook

Meditate

March

Jargon

Or

Call your

Congressperson

This

Away.

Neither a latte

Nor a  cadaver stiff

Drink

Will fix

Or make these

Hard cold blues

Say

“I’m sorry

I jacked your

Rights”.

(Neither will

An Oprah special.)

When they go low –

You go……

Where?

To quote Sean Connery

In “The Untouchables”-

“What are you prepared to do?”