Friday, January 27, 2017

Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Sam Love

Close up image of a microphone on a stage. The audience that is facing the microphone is blurred, appearing as a myriad of colors (red, white, green, yellow, etc.)
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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Arise
(inspired by the inauguration’s Women’s March)
by Sam Love

Arise to the thunder of millions of hearts
beating with a resonance of freedom
lifting up fists of all ages
to the fiery sky, color shifting
from orange to an opalescent blue

Messages so clear no one
can doubt the resolve
of a new dawn of compassion
flowing across the land

Young and old moving lock step
as millions lift up fists
purified by dissent
awakening again the cry
Liberté, égalité, sororité

a powerful trilogy that strikes fear
into the hearts of tyrants
who suppress our better nature
three words awakening from
a slumber to break free the masses
held prisoner in a trance of digital illusions

Marching arm in arm  
to shield the rights
of all who dare dream
of a future celebrating the best of a civilization
a civilization founded on the blood of dreams

Draw strength from this tsunami
rolling across the land
like a wild unleashed spirit
awakening the masses
that dare to dream again

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