***********************************************************

Make Art, Not War

Friday, January 6, 2012

The rising of the tide

Everyone I left back in FLake is drowning.
I miss their phone calls and play back the messages.
It sounds like them, but in a container
their voices calling to me from under the water
and it’s bad news.
They want me back
but I don’t go (often).
They want me to stick out my hand and grab them,
but I know better.
I know that a person will pull you in with them
to try to save themselves
push your head under water
a panicked, thrashing, hysterical behavior
I know- I used
to live there too, in the blue.
I have since curbed my altruism.

I sailed to a new shore
and destroyed the ship when I landed.
Not a conqueror, a refugee.
I made a home and learned the language.
I made some new friends and I try to live
peaceably amidst this war
and to stand up for what is right and just
and for what I believe in.
Still, I think of my family out there,
broken fingers that don’t make a hand
symptoms of this greater struggle that we are all in
against poverty, against hatred breeding hatred, and the kind of
willful ignorance that war creates, I think about
the casualties of this economy that we have all become
(the whole world paying for it) and I hope to have
some kind of impact on the next batch of us
who dream of an impossibly beautiful and bright future
for fear that we cannot even save ourselves.

No comments: