Pulsing and Still

Pulsing and Still



History alive! Among us,
Even as we memorialize—
Statues carved in marble,
Statues carved in blood.
Made real in the absence of life,
Made hard in the absence of new context.

Memory alive! Among us,
Even as we are distanced—
Making hallowed spaces,
Making martyrs’ births.
Controlled by burning persistence,
Controlled by the endurance of meaning.

Memory alive! Among us,
Even as we co-struggle—
Movements against descents,
Movements from stillness.
Built on fathers’ mothers’ spilt seeds,
Built on volk’s fables and silk-woven webs.

Johnny Rebs to Lee’s leavings.
Rainbow promises to Stone walls.
Stars and bars to courthouse squares.
Slave quarters ring Liberty’s bells.
Hero chiefs from Trails of Tears.

Beating hearts to stilled Pulses.
Travesties to guilt collected.

Guns and bayonets and atom bombs,
In the name of greater goods,
Democracies to mobs,
Rules of law distended,
To lives that matter,
To life.

Memory alive! Recollected,
Even as we make history,
Staging for the personal,
Staging for re-telling.
Gathering space for stolen souls,
Gathering for the resolution of memory.

One year, then millenia.

Fifty-two weeks of mourning,
An endless morning, daybreak of terror:
Dawn of lives cut shorter,
Dawn of nightmares unleashed:
Ageless in each stolen beat,
Ageless in the living memory.

Memory alive! Among us,
Alongside quarters and ghettoes,
Spaces made with spirits here,
Spaces filled with histories’ nows.
Rebels, ever recalcitrant.
Rebels, terrorists resurgent.

Memory: a life! Come back!
Forget hatred’s agency:
No, never forget pride’s legacy,
No, never forget pride’s promises.
Resist history’s stale betrayals.
Resist the crumbs of opiated numbness. 

Memory again: beat again.
Memory again, beat without ceasing.
Memory again, spaces and ghosts:
     And broken hearts,
     And hearts alive,
     And among us, still.
          Pulsing and stilled,

              Pulsing still. 

Comments

Popular Posts