Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – F.A. Cole

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, 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. 

***

God’s Greatest Invention – WOMAN!
by F.A. Cole

The 31^st chapter in the book of Proverbs sums it up, however here are a few more characteristics that best describes woman…

Woman! Empowered by God to do Exploits

In her, is strength and power

Her genetic makeup is Love; Warmth; Integrity and

Perseverance

On her Head she carries her beauty

On her Shoulders; the cares of her world

In her Arms; the joy of giving

In her Womb; greatest inventions and ideas

On her Feet; good tidings

Around her Waist; womanly pleasures                         

She can speak w/out saying a word

Weep w/out shedding tears

Laugh w/out making a sound

Have her child confess to an act just by giving him/her the look

Prepare a three-course meal from a handful of beans and a cup

of wheat

Diane Mariechild said “Woman is the full circle. Within her lies

the power to Create, Nurture, and Transform.”

Often times she is Misunderstood; Misjudged and Misplaced

She’s expected to not have an opinion on the issues of life

To speak if/when spoken to

Live in total subjugation to the opposite sex all the days of her

life

When she speaks out, she’s labeled a Feminist.

She is soft spoken but stern

Trusting but cautious

Fun-loving but responsible

She is adventurous; a go-getter; an entrepreneur

Compassionate; charming; vivacious

Edgy at times but that’s what sets her apart

“She can say more in a sigh than a man can in a sermon”

She is a two-sided mirror; the world see her as impossible

She sees herself as God’s greatest invention – a Phenomenon!

Because, that’s what she is

Her presence is captivating

Her scent; alluring

Her smile; sensuous

Her body a work of art that can never be duplicated

Her love is like a stormy night full of mysteries waiting to be

explored

She is secured in her sexuality and embraces her femininity

        She is Woman!

        Woman indeed!

Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Allene Nichols

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, 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. 

***

To My Students
by Allene Nichols

You are strong and beautiful

And drowning
in the sea
of other people’s
ignorance

You’re scared
when they tell you to go back
to countries and continents
you’ve never seen
or when they tug
at your hijab
or call you a pervert
or use names we thought
buried in a bitter past

You are strong and beautiful

But their boiling anger
threatens
to annihilate you

You are strong and beautiful

And you are brave and kind
so you cling to each other
while the tide tries
to wash you away

You are strong and beautiful

But some people reflect you back
in ways that make you seem ugly
and make you want to be ugly
so you sit in my class and ask why
I tell you that

You are strong and beautiful

and you will make this land
a better place
so don’t let evil blind you
or bind you to ideas that rise
from the angry foam
of an ignorant sea

Be strong and beautiful

and you will turn this ugly tide
Until then, use your strength
and your beauty

to survive 

Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Edward “Ned” Haggard

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, 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. 

***

MELLOW ….
by Edward “Ned” Haggard

“You were vicious and violent but

now

you're mellow”; Trump’s words

to his victory tour faithful. CNN reports

on it passively, a nearly quaint aside. Today,

Trump mocks critical response claiming

his comments were post-victory

humor. The faithful laugh, sharing the

“joke”; after all, barring surprise,

a President-elect did not criticize viciousness

and violence as wrong, but as a “joke.”

Book burnings coming?

Science is a joke…?

Integrity is a joke…?

Compassion is a joke…?

Women are a joke…?

Climate Change is a joke…?

Lies, denial and deflection steering

manipulation;

the renewed way in style…?

The faithful are pawns,

“I don’t need you anymore;

well, maybe I will in four years.”

They cheered!

A resurrected dictum as social services

vanish or modify to spotty

dependability:

arbeit macht frei?

Exploitation is de rigeur;

wisdom of the crooked line?

Gush up, trickle-down?

To the greedy go the spoils?

Let the rest starve or

die? Could be, could be….

Artificial Intelligence erasing

a toiling yet working

class sufficiency that paved the way

to Dream?

Ayn Rand, a poisoned, rot gut wine?

And the sacredness of human life?

Gone the route of Holocaust and

Peenemunde?

Internment in a resurrected

Manzanar over the American

horizon? Mass deportations?

Who will write the

full truth of Gitmo? And when?

Making America Great Again…?

##

Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Jelle Cauwenberghs

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, 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. 

***

Dark Is Not Your Absence
by Jelle Cauwenberghs

Only resistance. My silence.

I was a monk fish;

I dwelled on the fringe, my basking rock.

But on the bus I could not stop

staring at you, either broad or dented, no less real,

slanted across the ocean, your west side story

flapping in the wind, cropped coral

ghosting the sea, scalp

furied raw with worry, nag you said hag.

A bolt to the brain, stem intact and curtain-call.

You dazzled me. Your rosetta stone of cursives

drained me dry, drip-filtered;

I watched you, frothing roe, a frenzy

of floating bellies and torn fins splayed frondlike

against the nimbus of light.

In

articulate

ravage of a language walled up; trapped fire

with no escape and all these open windows

lashed orange. I felt the pull

of the undisturbed deep yet I could not look away.

I never could.

What could not be pared would not

peel and rot

and go to rest in glass canyons.

You will rise up until you speak blue

breathe and choke blue. Blue is the color of your oddysseys

and blue is the unspoken

flipside of your blind passion.

Blue is unstoppable and unidentified.

Blue is an ink cloud when it mingles with water

soaks the blouse you wear like a bruise.

Thunder singes

when it finds your spine and heals no more

like bone, or cauterizes so easily.

Blue gushes on the page so I have to.

The painter of your portrait but unvarnished

because it seems I care for you, femur and vowel,

act femme for you. Sing your blue boys and girls.

Blot your gaping wound, pour salt on your split

disloyal tongue, bridge the distance,

cringe, for your sake clasp the asp to my vipered breast; the dead

broken letters, scrolls and pillars, your shorn mane.

All marble can do is lie dormant

while we gasp

gasp gasp, care for flintsick earth, spin and bathe

in the living, and keen for the grassland

rebels in their snowy tents, the soggy pile of teddy bears

in Cleveland, the tides

with their strange slackjawed flotsam,

hurt like only a widow at night can feel the blood

shame of her cavalry sons –

her explosive belt of fallen stars, collapse and lisp

spit or pill wide-eyed fits or lose it completely but we won’t.

You won’t.

You are on active duty.

If you let it and you let it come close

with stinger and fang and clenched fists; then.

You will sit here and wait for loud brass,

heels clacking, our own music

all words that speak to us be

cause trumpets can softly scream

these shrill, scratchy clawing truths – remember? Only at night

at gunpoint, it seems, honey, we swarm

in rage and deliver scraps of dawn, dole it out – hope

promise, cross my heart I will eat the sour grapes of your love.  But please.

Gently approach, gray city friend.

Leave your guns and your safe cypresfenced towns,

I want to sit with you in the dark.

Walk me there.

Teach me again to pick shiver

ing butterflies by their frail wings. Not to pull

when nobody else is watching

because you know you can?

The surprise pain of elbow shock is the sentence

I ask for, again 

and again; because our union is vulnerable,

but this too can be pleasure, if you know when to release me;

this trust is my purple, bruised throat.

I undress for you. That is poetry.

To hope, if you will,

I must  lay my body on the line, my all 

and everything.

For you, I will break my vow, my silence,

lock arms and wade into the future, however frightening;

however unreal. 

Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Joe Amaral

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, 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. 

***

The Invisible Minority
by Joe Amaral

My mother is one hundred percent

                                                Portuguese

descended from the Azores Islands.

In grade school she was considered

                                                Hispanic

Lumped as a minority

and treated as such.

When I applied for colleges

I proudly/jokingly

stated my ethnicity as

                                                Other: Azorean

I was categorized

                                                White/Caucasian

a generation later despite

being a pure-blooded                       

                                                Portagee

Apparently my immigrant status

joined the

                                                British

and

                                                Irish

and

                                                Italians

who created the first ghettoes

and forgot the new life opportunity

their ancestors eked out for them.

My great-grandparents died in their thirties

as slaves to asbestos in Massachusetts

cotton mills- nobody lasted

more than eight cancerous years

before their diseased lungs filled up with fluid

and drowned them.

My grandparents spoke our native tongue fluently-

my mother too- but then she was told

only to speak English in school.

Mom completely lost

the old world language

she was born and inherited into.

I only experienced my culture

in snippets and short stories

from the age-burned scroll

of my sheepherder grandfather’s memory.

I am foreign the way food may be spicy-

not red hot, not even medium.

I am mild salsa, no hint of fire.

I struggle with my perceived

social status, my class allotment,

but I refuse to fall under

an all-inclusive

                                                Anglo

banner symbolizing anything but peace

or hubris, as if my being a privileged

                                                White American

gives me the power

to pretend I am above

the poor races

who picked up

the tools we dropped.

(published in Writers of the Portuguese Diaspora in the United States and Canada: An Anthology by Boa Vista Press, November 3, 2015)

Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Lisa Suhair Majaj

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, 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. 

***

No
by Lisa Suhair Majaj

There’s no poetry in it,

but I need to say something about No,

how it stands up, no matter how unpopular,

in the face of injustice. Maybe it can’t

thwart history: the powerful have always known

what they can do, and they do it.

No can’t stop an avalanche.

But No could be a retaining wall

built of rough stones wrested from the earth,

carried one by one up the hill on someone’s back.

No might be a tree in the middle of a village street:

traffic shifts to flow around it, its presence

a reminder of what used to be, what won’t be

forgotten. No is the perimeter of stubborn cactus

springing up around destroyed villages.

You can bulldoze houses, evict or kill the inhabitants,

but the thorns of memory can’t be eliminated.

No is steadfast. It knows what it’s like

to have nothing in its hands but dignity.

Published in Geographies of Light (Del Sol Press, 2009)