Don’t Forget to Breathe

Step one: breathe
Stretch yourself
between soil and sky
Feel your lungs fill
with the facts of your towering insignificance
(or the weak necessity of your being,
if you prefer)

Know that you are no more than a seed
and no less, either
Nearly weightless
Food for the scavengers
and a dwelling place
for worlds
Possibility of possibilities

Step two: hope,
though you have no reason to
Plant yourself in the
fertile ground of despair
and work your way upward

Tell the stories of those who came before
Listen to their voices
and sing
Even death songs contain
a restless beauty

A gaze cast heavenward is
a meeting of eyes
even if love is not
the occasion for the dance

There is much to fear:
Be afraid.
Hold your neighbor’s trembling hand
Look sideways
Let no one convince you that
hope is easy
cheap
or sufficient

Step three: burn it all down
Tear the nooses from the trees
Don’t save the wood for timber
Feed it to a thirsty fire
and gather ’round,
telling ghost stories of
how the used to survives
in the even now

Tear down any federal building
with the audacity
to display the word ‘justice’
on any of its walls
Leave no stone left on another
and do not clean up every mess
Leave some as monuments
to the creative power of destruction

Remember that dystopia and apocalypse
are current event and historical fact

Strip every police officer
to their naked shame
and leave them shivering cold
Point them to the nearest fire and
if they approach for warmth
embrace the human uncovered

Wring out your clothes
They are soaked in blood
Empty the infrastructure
of the souls it contains

Salvation is not our goal
Liberation is
Before you return to the land
return it

Step four: spread the ashes on your soil
Correct imbalances
Remember that what once was
is always a part
of what is now
no matter how its shape may change

Tend carefully to what you plant
and what rises from this sorrowed earth
Do not expect perfection
Never expect the work ended

Watch the grass grow
through cracks in the pavement
and forgive yourself
for having consumed so much asphalt

Be fiercely grateful
Fall into harsh and dreadful love
Be passionately gentle

Don’t forget to breathe

Untitled – 11/9/16

This is the failure
of poetry
This is the failure
of art
This is the failure
of sentiment
and beauty
and the good manners
draped shitty and slant
over twisted vertices

This is the failure
of success
and the success
of delusion
and the marketplace
of violence
and the hell
of broken bones
grown ugly
from a soil
of vomit and blood

This is the hard
and heavy rain
pounding against
a bitter earth
flowing into a
murderous sea
with the name
of a nation

This is an asphalt remedy
for the
hemorrhaging memories
seeping from
hungry
cannibal
hearts

This is the
Original Sin
and the
Last Temptation
and the
Total Depravity
of the mirror
This is the reaping
and the harvest
of the dead fields
sown with sick seed

This is the limit
of grace
and the border
of hope
and the final breath
of redemption
sucking gravely the
foul air
into blackened lungs

This is the broken
anguished cry
of supplication
and this is
the darkened sky’s
endless silence

On the Anniversary of the Massacre in Nagasaki and the Murder of Michael Brown, 2016

We dropped the bomb
We pulled the trigger
and not the first time, either

Brown bodies littering the streets
in Nagasaki, in Missouri
the refused and executed

necessary wasted lands and lives
if our grand scheme of power and peace
of law and order are to prevail

We create and conjure monsters
melting the flesh from schoolchildren
and the belovedness from blackchildren

and then call ourselves heroes
for our bravery and violence
in the face of our own fictions

How many thousands dead
and how many thousands more
before we have scrubbed the world white?

The crucifixion of Mike Brown
the crucifixion of Nagasaki
and Hiroshima
                             and Sandra Bland
                                                               and East Liberty

are leaving such holes in my hands
and tearing such life in my chest
that it is only a matter of time

until what is left?
Still, I bleed only words
while others have no such privilege

snuffed out on city streets
clutching sweet tea like prayer books
Dead
           dying
                      afraid

Because, after all, what’s one more city?
And, after all, what’s one more cross
on every block
                             everywhere

until the end of time?

They Say It’s…

They say it’s a gateway drug
leading inexorably
                                 down
into the prison of hard addiction

yet never issue such warnings
about our habits of consumption
or ravenous use of fossil fuels
without which many are certain they
                                                                  would
                                                                               die

never examining the million dependencies
that clamor about our enlightened civilization
as we ingest novelty and convenience
at every turn

They say it dulls the mind
in anti-drug curriculums
set in schools where standardized tests
and cold, regurgitated “facts”

quell the inquisitive spirits
of entire generations
for whom the rates of depression
and anxiety have skyrocketed

the solution to which is the prescription
of ever more medication to keep us
“normal”
                 “well-adjusted”
                                             “sane”

so we can stare at our screens
in front of TV dinners
and watch videos of cats playing xylophones
and ignore anyone we might be with

It’s harmful and dangerous
comes the admonition
from the architects of the crack epidemic
and a $7.25 minimum wage

whose first reason to demonize it
was: “the Mexicans use it”
and who continue to destroy the lives
and communities of people of color

by throwing users into prison
at disproportionate rates
as though prison were anything but
harmful
               and
                        dangerous

They say it’s a gateway drug
Well, I don’t know about all that
but I sure would like to find some way
to get the hell out of here

Ash Wednesday, 2016

Ash Wednesday
and a nation half-buried
still resists confession.

Used to be
Gehenna was outside
the city walls.

When did it migrate?
Find itself at the center
surrounded

by invisible lines
gorged artists
and Starbucks™?

Encircled now
by white men
in white robes

or business suits
or tweed jackets
or nothing at all

performing some
sacred rite of initiation
or supplication

beseeching the gods
for eternal life
and prosperity

cupping the smoke
to their faces
and breathing deep

forcing it across
their pale bodies
in hateful rapture.

Some even
cover themselves
in the ash

trying desperately
to appear as though
they’ve passed through the fire

without having
to endure
its pain.

And up and up
the beautiful black smoke
rises

and touches the sky
as we drink the tears
of our martyrs

persistent in our belief
that every drop of blood
lost in Ferguson

every business lost
in East Liberty
every home lost in Detroit

is a drop, a shop, a home
gained
for us.

That the slow death
of another
is a longer life for us.

All that is needed
is water
to put out the fire

yet we strike Flint
starting another
to fuel the mania.

This is our wilderness
our madness
our original sin.

For forty years
and a thousand
have we wandered

these ashes
blowing in the wind
since Creation.

Maybe it is time
for our bodies
to feed the flames.

For David Bowie (Part I)

I read the news today
                                           oh boy
fresh from my slumber
                                              and reeled

I wept as I listened
to Rock ’N’ Roll Suicide
knowing that, too,
was a death of yours
but one long past

This time is different, though
A death that puts your others
to some final rest
and leaves me wondering
what reincarnation is left

I know we’ve never met
but I’m not quite sure I believe it
the way I’m feeling now
Your face is among
my earliest memories

I must have made my way
with Sarah to the castle
beyond the Goblin City
a hundred times as a child
your power over me always more total

It’s only forever
It’s not long at all
you sang

Where is the line that separates
artist from art
creator from creation?
I know such a line must exist
yet you seemed intent
on obscuring it

You did this so gracefully that
even now
I am not sure
whether or not I know you
whether you are friend
or stranger

So I will call you friend
You and your troupe
of queer extraterrestrial misfits
and pray for your peace
with fingers on strings
until the day you return

It’s only
                forever
It’s not long
                        at all

The Lights Have Now Gone Up

The lights have now gone up
on all the houses
to fight off the winter chill

enthrall the local children
They mostly stoke my melancholy
call me out in single file

sing ghostly tunes of Christmas past
in keys of nostalgia and foreign warmth
tell of roasting chestnuts and frightful weather

Trees are up, and the smell of pine
mingles in the air with cinnamon and nutmeg
and these with others, communing in

a single scent, sensor of memory
that thaws and breaks me in the same moment
Kris Kringle’s ever-present gaze somehow comforting

and clawing at the back of my heart
The season is like a family member
whose flaws I know intimately Yet for

some reason, perhaps that very same,
I come to pine for their companionship,
my knees on the cold ground, seeking reunion

some breaking of the gingerbread
the flavor of kinship and history
numb fingers clutching at ancient bonds

of neighbor love and goodwill to all
My hands belong in theirs, to
savor the touch of familiarity that

the sands of summer and time have buried
I wait as best I know how, resisting the
demands of our industrial messiah

to sate the hunger by rejoicing
But no! It is not yet time for that!
We wait, and in this are we together

I know that the only way
to bear this gnawing hunger is
to go together to the feast, or else

to share the pain of its impossibility.
At least until Christ finally climbs down from
his bare tree, offering invitation to

the beast that sleeps between us, within us,
to lie with the lambs of our better nature,
to feast in joyful madness, as family

For EE Cummings and Richard Wright

Yesterday, September 3, was the anniversary of the death of EE Cummings (and please don’t tell me that it should be “ee cummings”), who is far and away my favorite poet, for reasons I will discuss shortly.

Today, September 4, is the birthday of another important author, albeit of a starkly different variety. His name is Richard Wright, and he is most well known for his great novel Native Son, which tells of a young black man in the 1930/40s who murders a white woman and the subsequent drama that takes place.

Besides being contemporaries, the two men seem to have little in common. One, a white, Taoist, unconventional poet who became increasingly right-wing and paranoid, eventually a strong supporter of Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunt against Communism; the other, a black, far-left (at one point Communist), realist who dealt with the realities of black life in America primarily through novels and essays. Though it might be interesting to do a comparative study of Cummings and Wright, that is not my intention today. I would merely like to briefly reflect on two ways of seeing the world (broadly-speaking) which these two men represent to me, two visions which are equally important to me though they often seem at odds with one another. What holds them together, ultimately, is that the thought of both men is disruptive. The works of both Cummings and Wright can and do function to question our narratives and force us to see the world differently, to face a world which is always-already present.

For anyone unfamiliar with EE Cummings poetry, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Cummings’ use of unconvention is expert. Below is one of my favorites, commonly known as “i thank You God.” (Cummings titled none of his poems, thus they are catalogued and known by their first lines primarily).

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Cummings odd use of language, punctuation, and structure (seen more clearly in other poems), beautifully (and sometimes frustratingly) defamiliarizes our world, removing us from it for a brief moment, enabling us to experience it anew. The phrase “for most this amazing day” rests upon a simple switch in grammatical convention which is, linguistically, foreign to us but intuitively present. It may evoke a double-take, prodding us to look again at what we (thought) we read or understood. And it is undeniably playful. One might even say magical. And therein lies, for me, Cummings’ greatest contribution: his ability to imbue his art (and through it the world) with a sense of mystical playfulness, wonder, and newness. Cummings cuts through a sort of modernist alienation that sees our world as mechanical, industrial, to be used rather than experienced and enjoyed. Cummings disrupts complacency, boredom, and the calculated and cold narrative of Scientific Progress to make room for something Else, something mysterious and beautiful that cannot quite be named; he uses language to move us beyond language, which is a rare gift, indeed.

Richard Wright, on the other hand, is exacting with his language. The prose of Native Son is stark, uncompromising, and brutal. Native Son is a must-read for anyone who cares about American literature, Black experience in America, or the capital punishment system. It is not playful. It is not even, ultimately, likable. Wright’s protagonist, Bigger Thomas, is not sympathetic. There was no attempt to elicit sympathy from readers, lest Bigger become an exception. Bigger is, instead, a harsh look into the psychology of Black folks in America. James Baldwin (an equally powerful author and critic) once wrote that “no American Negro exists who does not have his private Bigger Thomas living in his skull.” This, too is unfamiliar to many (experientially, this is unfamiliar to all whites). Wright’s work, like Cummings’, shows us a different world than that which many perceive daily, but this world is much more frightening. Wright, too, wrote some poetry (though not much). But instead of using his language to move us beyond the mundanities of industrial capitalism, Wright uses it to train our eyes on something most of us would rather not look at – take “Between the World and Me,” for instance, which describes the experience of a man who stumbles upon the scene of a lynching in the woods. One part of the poem reads:

And upon the trampled grass were buttons, dead matches,
butt-ends of cigars and cigarettes, peanut shells, a
drained gin-flask, and a whore’s lipstick;
Scattered traces of tar, restless arrays of feathers, and the
lingering smell of gasoline.
And through the morning air the sun poured yellow
surprise into the eye sockets of the stony skull….

Do not tear your eyes away, says Wright. This is your country, this is your history, this is your sin. One might say that Wright demystifies the world, tears away its veneer of innocence and reveals the hanged (wo)man behind the curtain. This, if taken seriously, can radically alter the world in which one believes they reside. It can remove the comfort of our excuses. Bigger Thomas is always with us, but we have made Bigger to be what he is. You cannot tell someone they are a monster, that they are no good, worthless, unlovable for too long before they begin to believe it about themselves. This, too, is a narrative that must be not only disrupted, but shouted down at every opportunity.

It would be wrong of me to say that I find myself between Cummings and Wright; the truth is, I find myself inhabiting both spaces – that is to say, the playful mystery of Creation that Cummings makes visible, and the harsh truth of racism in America that Wright exposes. I have no desire to give up either. Rather, my desire is to live into each more fully, to bring them into conversation, but to never become too overwhelmed by one that I fail to see the other. Above all, I hope to live my life with others in such a way that my way of being in the world is itself a question, a challenge, a rupture. To live and struggle for others to live well. As Richard Wright also once wrote, “it is good to live when one feels that such as that will happen to one. Life becomes sufficient unto life; the rewards of living are found in living.”

Visiting the Tomb

There is nothing new under the sun. The events unfolding in Ferguson, Missouri over the past two weeks are not an anomaly or a novelty. The catalyst, the shooting of young Michael Brown, is a tale told often in our country, its roots stretching all the way back to Jamestown, Virginia, the bitter notes of the Middle Passage comprising the score. And while, perhaps, the collective action of the community might not have been anticipated (and why not?), such a reaction surely isn’t unheard of in American history (with the catalyst often being eerily similar to the most recent).

One of the more horrifying things to come from situations like these is the immediate scramble in the wake of the killing to uncover reasons why the victim in question “had it coming.” Proof that this young Black man was, in fact, a thug, as they all are. Images (erroneous though they may be) circulate of young Mike Brown in unflattering poses, and he is branded “no angel.” It happens every time, like clockwork. There is nothing new under the sun. Our progress since the days of the lynching tree? It is now customary to wait until after the murder for justification. Behold the magnanimity of Enlightened White America.

But so what if he was? What if Mike Brown was “troubled?” What if he stole some cigars, resisted arrest? Would this somehow change the situation from tragic to acceptable, even positive? No.

Innocence is not a precondition for existence, for the right to life.

The rewriting of the narrative, the “unearthing” of the “real” Michael Brown, (or Trayvon Martin, or Wendell Allen, or Emmett Till, not to mention the numbers of Black women who are killed and go entirely unremembered and unknown)  is merely a smokescreen, a distraction, a desperate grasping at anything that might save us from facing the brutal reality of the situation. The reactions of those in Ferguson, be they rioters or peaceful protestors, is continually with us, simmering just below the surface; and how could it not be? We (and when I use the collective pronoun “we” here, I am referring particularly to White America, even White Christian America) cannot even listen to the wails of anguished mothers before jumping to clear our name, to justify murder.  We cannot even be silent for one moment to hear the stories and experiences of the people of color in our midst. For those who claim to follow Jesus, these reactions go beyond wrong; they are downright blasphemous.

It’s no secret that I take Matthew 25 as a foundational text for interpreting scripture, committed to the belief that Jesus is somehow mystically present to us in the face of the Other, the Stranger, the Marginal. This, along with other things, informs a reading of the Jesus narrative as one of liberation for the oppressed, liberty to captives, and good news for the poor (Jesus’ words, not mine). Essential to such a reading is the de-centering of my own experience as a person of immense privilege – that is, as a person who can choose to not listen to the cries of anguish arising from Ferguson, or can even choose to manipulate the narrative so that I completely cover those cries with my own cries of “Crucify!” We must move beyond our hermeneutic of narcissism which says that the Bible was written to me. In a very important sense, the Bible was not written to me. That is, I and my kind are not the protagonists in the Biblical narratives. Oh, we’re there, all right; just not where we’ve been told to look. More often than not, we’re shouting for Barabbas to be released.

So if Jesus is present to us in that capacity, it should radically alter our reactions to episodes like Ferguson, or Gaza, or Watts. Though the Gospel message is not written primarily to me, I (and all who claim to follow Jesus) inhabit the role of disciples. So what is our response to be when Jesus is crucified? While Jesus lies on the ground, six bullet holes dead, what is the posture of a disciple? It seems that we continue to run away, hiding ourselves from what has happened and the potential repercussions. We clamor to uncover new “truths” that shield us from the heartbreaking and tragic reality that faithfulness calls us to face. And we never. Shut. The hell. Up.

Perhaps the faithful response is that of the women in the crucifixion story. To grieve, deeply, and to visit the tomb. To place ourselves near the body of Jesus, to smell the death. I hope it doesn’t sound trite to advance the idea that this may be one way to image solidarity: the visiting of the tomb. True, there are rocks in the way, but many hands make light work. And maybe, in our reverent silence, we will hear the groans of weeping mothers, which are the groans of Creation, and they will, in time, become our own. But that will require much of us. It will require silence as well as proclamation. It will require those of us closed off because of our Whiteness and our distance to reduce that distance, to reflect on that Whiteness. And it’s gonna mean following Jesus to the Cross, over and over and over again. Because there are hills full of them. The Midwest is one. So is the South. So is America. So is every Empire.

I don’t have great ideas for how to move forward; I’d rather listen to the voices of those calling for action to lead the way. But one way forward is to listen. Listen for those places where there is anguish and sorrow and injustice – ‘cause that’s where you’re supposed to be. ‘Cause that’s where Jesus is. And another way forward is to start recognizing Jesus in the face of the oppressed, the downtrodden, the disinherited. But that’s not easy to do, when we continue to fashion Jesus in our own image. So let’s visit the tomb together, and find out what he really looks like.

I’m not saying Mike Brown was an angel; I’m saying Mike Brown was Jesus.

An Invitation

This is not a cogent analysis of the race relations of the United States. This is not a history lesson. This is not a program for social change, a blueprint for movement, or an academic take-down of Empire. This is a confession; a prayer; a lamentation.

The world is in turmoil and anguish. The truth is that it always has been, and probably always will be. There was no Prelapsarian Paradise; there is no Utopia up ahead, just around the corner of The Future. There is only now, the same now that has always been, in shifting hues of misery, anguish, domination, and Death.

Human beings, families, children fleeing from their country (because of a brutality in which the US has a heavy hand) are turned away with anger, scowls, screaming, and cold indifference. We don’t want them in our country. Their own country doesn’t want them, either. They are homeless; perhaps worse than homeless, they are placeless, in exile. They flee violence only to be met with more violence. The faces of those who claim to follow Jesus contorted into the faces of the same crowds calling for his crucifixion.

Human beings slaughtered in the West Bank. Thousands now. Over a quarter of them children. Families torn apart. A heavily-armed and -funded army (armed and funded largely by my own country, my Motherland) brutally attacking a civilian population backed into a tiny corner of their own homeland. They are being driven, systematically, to placelessness. They are being driven, systematically, to extinction. I am responsible. My nation is a bully, giving weapons to other nations, training them to be bullies. Murderers.

We have to protect our land, right? We have to expel the contaminating agents, do we not? We have to take what God has given us, no?

Human beings executed, every month. Recently these executions have been frequently “botched.” Joseph Wood of Arizona was injected 15 times with an experimental drug and it took him over two hours to die. Two hours of pain, agony, torment. Two hours of people staring at you, many of whom wish for your death, spectators of your torture. Death is a sport for us. We gobble it up like we need it to survive. Maybe we do at this point. After years in prison, a place intended to be No Place, to make others and yourself forget you are a person, to exit the world in such a shameful and horrifying way is unimaginable to me. It’s not unimaginable to many, though.

Human beings, children gunned down in Missouri streets. Families torn apart. Not just Missouri: Florida, North Carolina, Texas… More than likely every state, if we’re honest. Young black men are and always have been unfairly targeted and brutalized by the police. Now the community riots – because what else is there to do? The pain that the riots give voice and presence to is very, very real. With no other outlets for meaningful recourse of course there will be anger and sadness and rioting. And peaceful protesting now met with a heavily armed police force, pointing guns indiscriminately, imprisoning reporters, being bullies. How is anyone supposed to respond to something like that?

I’ll tell you how I want to respond. I want to riot, too. I want to throw molotov cocktails at police stations, I want them against a wall and pelted with rubber bullets from their own guns. I want them to fear walking down their own streets, because at any moment they could be beaten within an inch of their life for “looking suspicious.” I am struggling with my commitment to nonviolence right now. I’m more than angry. I’m desperate. After years, decades, centuries of spilling the blood of the Other, maybe it’s time that those of us on top start spilling our own. Maybe our cup has overflowed. Maybe we’re about to get what’s coming to us.

Several times over the last few weeks I have nearly broken down and sobbed, because it is never-ending. Each update of the death toll in Gaza brings me to my knees. And not to pray that from somewhere, high up above, God will bring an end to this. To my knees because I don’t know any other posture that’s appropriate. I cannot stand in the face of such things. I am torn apart, but it is only a sliver of what those in Central America, Gaza, or Ferguson feel. The only words that are appropriate are silent. The only action I can muster, inactive. There is a profound sorrow and tragedy in this world, and it is gathering in my chest.

I’m not asking for reassurance, or stories to help me feel better about the world. No one should feel good about this. No one should feel glad about what is going on. I’m not asking for you to join the riots, become an anti-death penalty advocate, or move to Palestine. I’m giving voice to my sorrow and unknowing and anger and despair. I’m inviting you to join me, if only for a moment, in the dark. I’m asking you – if you don’t already – to feel this in the pit of your stomach. To scream at the heavens, probably in futility. But to scream nonetheless. Because these are human beings. These are children, these are families, these are loved ones.

This is not a cogent analysis of the race relations of the United States. This is not a history lesson. This is not a program for social change, a blueprint for movement, or an academic take-down of Empire.

This is a confession; a prayer; a lamentation.

This is an invitation.