November 2018 Words + Art Reading + Poem

Unraveled
       freedom

Rewound
       unbound

Cut out
       as a tongue sliced into silence
       – or rest

Absenced
       into presence

Confession
       abstention
       (conscience leaves the chamber)

In privilege
       you get to cry and turn red
       over your spilt beer
       and the sailing of your ship
       into a mist that goes by the name of
       Lazarus (Emma)
              who will rise again in 4 days –
              the number of Humanity

In courage
       you get to be scorned
       and laughed at
       and having to play pretty
       to voice at all
       while shuffling off the gangplank
              …and this when
              you’re white and privileged, too

The banners are in tatters
       at Standing Rock
       couldn’t we see the petroglyphs
       on the wall
       and the exaggerated lips coming back out
       to be smeared on Serena
       all the way from a place
       that got its start as a penal colony

But the walls cannot stand
       they are gauzy
       and mist
       when we are not only of body
              or the enflamed emotions
              or even the mind
              – one of the greatest prisons of them all

Freedom can’t be bound
       when the soul
              of a life
              of a nation
              of a people
              of Humanity
                     is aflame

And they have tossed the match
       yet again as they sail off the edge
       of the world
       in the gasoline sea of beer kegs
       that will turn into floodlight bombs
       sweeping away the darkness
       of the psyche
       into the celebration of
       the richness of the skin
       within