Poems that Speak Out Against Violence and for Embrace - R. Copans

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. 

***

How Do You Protect the Person You Love

by R. Copans

I didn't think much of the drunk man

on the corner of North Station

He moves his hand toward his chest

while he speaks

It seems to just be a drunk move

But to my girlfriend holding my hand

he seems like his hand could be up to more

Nothing scares me more than straight, cis, white man

Nothing scares me until 50 queers

are killed

Nothing seems like second thought

That night a man with a crooked tie

and eyes we could analyze

had the girl who tells me I make her feel so safe

letting go of my hand

And all I want to do is protect the person I love

But how do you protect someone when 

your physical oriented instinct of protection

post the risk?

How do you protect the person you love

from a world that

wants to hurt you because of that?

How do you protect the person you love?

How do you protect the person you love?

Poems that Speak Out Against Violence and for Embrace - Anita Lerek

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. 

***

Emotional Labour

by Anita Lerek

I came to explore the wreck.

The words are purposes.

The words are maps.

I came to see the damage that was done

and the treasures that prevail.

- Adrienne Rich, from “Diving Into The Wreck” (1972) 

She is a ghost in the gay and lesbian archive,

laboring with records of HIV blood tests,

insurance policies, police summonses, obituaries;.

her mind, a jury of lives, what to destroy,

what to store as stand-ins for being:

She is the archivist of her times,

at the retractable shore watching,

then falling into the furies that destroy

inside and out: from nausea and night sweats

and wasting away to carpeted and drug-sweetened

pits created by dragons from desperate quarters

raging, stabbing, shooting away.

She is the shaman communicating between ancestors

and pleaders, she is the instrument 

that transports back from the dead. 

Lazarus-like snaking out of the rock.

She sorts through leaflets and postcards,

cries from another time,

deciphering messages  

on mother pines

pulped and squeezed  

into paper weapons demanding life.

Keep the scribbled note of a meeting, the route of the demonstration,

guest list of dignitaries, announcing a politician’s effigy burning:

boxes of memories, screaming infants that won’t be stilled.

Are there contraceptives to block suffering’s ooze

to the witness, bomb shelters to safeguard angels?

Say, a decisive thrust, a certain view that draws a line

between you and them, such as,

‘it’s just the past, just a job, it’s far away.

Don’t worry, nothing wrong with you.’

Her body holds the others,

through continuous exposure,

frame by frame, sharp pains

ground in velvet, with interludes

of the ordinary: dry cleaning stub

museum pass, bar receipt

for 12 bottles of ice vodka.

The social body grows upon the cells

and tissues of bodies, limbs upon limbs

linked by mathematical gods that enrich and curse

through multiplication.

Try to create barriers between the innocent and the enraged,

the hardy plants and the infected ones. Keep the beetles

and weeds from crossing over.

Can’t stop the mottle virus.

Can’t stop the spilling over of disturbance.   

Try capturing stillness outside the body before doubling over.

Try for delay with prescriptions for cocktails:  

Epzicom   Triumeq

Evotaz   Prezcobix.

Sorting . . . listing . . . 71 million people from the start infected with HIV . . . 34 million worldwide

died of AIDS . . . Massacres in Bataclan, Baton Rouge, San Bernardino

The mighty sperm whale pregnantwith stenches,

ashes, and shadowy particles

dreams of reaching goddesses

promising invisibility, but she can’t let go.  

On her late night walk home, young men laugh

and stumble over her as if she is not there.

She approaches the park bench,

inches in between the day’s damage,

fingers the odours, the burnings,

the swellings that thread through shadows

clenched together.

Cries propel her out of the wreck,

to work, to breathe messages

from mighty pine ancestors

into the mouths of those left standing.

Poems that Speak Out Against Violence and for Embrace - Douglas William Garcia Mowbray

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. 

***

Emancipation Approximation

by Douglas William Garcia Mowbray

In an if-you-seesaw something

say-seesaw something

city of charm and harm,

laying claim to two-hundred-year-old odes,

laying blame to two hundred dropped bodies before sundown,

in desperate need for a new song,

a new slogan on the benches

baking in the sun

cooking the bus-waiters like smuggled ostrich eggs.

In a city cicada is a rattlesnake

and rabid squirrels are backyard dogs.

The cicada is drowned out

from the ace in the spoke-blades overhead,

and the squirrel falls from the gingko tree

with a thump, startling the rat,

harbinger of a happy meal,

little carrier of dizzy unease,

like the little councilperson who sold out all the easements—

not so little when backed by the backers

backing the broken backs into the back corner—

the rat is dreaming he’s a butterfly

and dreaming of the bomb in this total war,

wondering why he ever got on the damned ark.

Next time around, he’ll lobby to be a shark.

Next time around, the city song will be a whale song.

This time around, after the bomb,

the cicadas will be snacks,

the squirrels will be delicacies,

and the helicopters will be

the black corpses in the streets.

 

Poems that Speak Out Against Violence and for Embrace - Ben Herron

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. 

***

Delinquent Roses

by Ben Herron

(For the children residing New Alternatives Group Homes and all children trying to survive.)

our children bring

woven into the fabric

of the sunset

against a made night

they wrestle for attention

one life time replaces another

for a moment I feel alive

for a moment i feel the

wind in my prayers

adjusting me to myself

giving the option to challenge

time in battle

we smuggle time across

borders that board us in

and reality brings us dreams

before sleep

our names start to define

the declarations of our

dependence

I build myself from oya skin

and jesus sweat and for once eyes

feel

gates open eyes push in

delinquent roses grab my ankles

they all want answers

they walk in baby steps

unsure of there name and heart

back stroking

but it ain’t tight

we shake of haters giving

so much to the takers

fresh of the plantation with

plans for a nation

wearing bullets and Nkrumah

symbols shaped like skulls

those wretched want it all

but give nothing

those delinquent roses have

escaped the earths gravity

looking for an omen planet

a solstice in the middle of the

night

they want bloods to beat

bilafones that sound off

gangsta funk

they want urban terrorism

so they can find a reason

to love themselves

in images of dung we shape

governments

full of our own image

we are at war with mere

children

whining newborns that only

want a chance for some of that

milky stuff

in omni pain they serve

themselves visions eyes hidden

and spirit hollowed

trapped inside religion

i run there myself sometimes

i pretend im praying when im

really crying

my heads down all the same

my eyes cross like intersections

my people are the definitive

example of living resurrection

the rhyming relentless

the blues-smith

we are pros of creation

but deaths amateurs

in this nigga creating

nation

give Africa a gun in pain

and watch it cry bullets

but the healer blockers got

the bullets

ready to cock and squeeze

in a matrix made from

tricks

abbra ka klack klack dabbra

a new world with a ghetto for

a brain and slavery for it’s

genitals

it’s semen is synthetic it

only breeds lies

i saw them make a man out

of wire and nightmares

his teeth where shaped like

mau mau spears

they wanted his bite to be

black and amble

dropped and seldom

they wanted his bite flawless

yet full of every mistake we

have made

but the delinquent roses

still only want water

they don’t want a dried

out cotton mouth

that spits out little balls of

white foam with no age

they want rain from the chest up

they want fire by gun or god

either way they get fire

they rather burn things than

learn things

because what they take is

often more then what we give

when will we learn that you

can’t enslave life

you can’t expect rhythm to not

be rhythm

if it looks like a snake

than it’s probably not a snake

we have been conditioned to see

what we see for only what we see

and what they are is what we have

made them

the wretched want them in pain

better yet the wretched want them

dead

our dependent on a system that

makes them put something in there

system

if you don’t want truths then stop

telling us lies

because we live in the natural

nature

of the unnatural and a lie is like

a circle it will eventually come

back

around with a 2 ton hand the size

of America north and land on your

throat

with fury and fear between its

fingers and you will never escape

its choke or punch

they had to create a red and blue

world because their rainbow

was not bright enough

this black and white world was

not bright enough

they needed arches and bangs

with memories over-looking

under-livings of a new and

revived middle passage

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...