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.
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