Sometimes politics is a vision, an endless coral reef, the creation
of one thousand generations. Everything imaginable lives
there and the things that we must do are clear, imminent. Sometimes
politics is a power with which I write the truth
into the heavens; I think constellational thoughts by which
women and men guide the planetary ship.
And then, other times, politics is a world with gravity in
which my life is less than ash, times
when I am the remainder of a defeated people.
By my name the world marks the mass grave
of Black humanism; today's struggle is a memorial revolt
against the already forgone genocide that hasn't caught
up to our bodies.
When politics is cosmology, the multiplying universe
and I are one; I am not afraid of mortality or the distance
between galaxies and history is a love affair between possibility
and matter. When politics is the play thing of
the powerful I, like Job, want god's sense of history
to turn away from me, for I fear that I am a slug
on the boulder that crushes the poor.
Politics is elation; politics is despair.
Know that I am most content when politics is names
that I know, hearts that come together, words
that begin universal and end unique like a single loaf
of bread that ends in our mouths. When politics
is wanting to be a human being and nothing else
heaven does not tempt me and power is not triumph.
Politics is the word compañero in many mouths.
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5 comments:
beautiful unity of poetry and politics, do. aesthetic praxis.
sometimes it seems that the radical is condemned to the extreme-- seeking one's vision at the core leads to potent hope and potent despair. the slug on the boulder and the death that has not yet caught up are chilling images; and you know i'm right there with you in my love of constellations.
other thoughts include the true-ringing dangerousness of the metaphors of the reef and the ship so perilously close together in the first stanza.
also, the spirit of gravity-- one of nietzsche's ancient enemies.
and extra points for words that begin universal and end unique like a single loaf of bread that ends in our mouths.
the court is really getting miraculous
thanx israel. i actually hadn't caught the proximity of the ship and the reef. i love when that happens.
and yeah, my favorite image is the universal/unique word of bread.
and sharing these words with you is how i get my nourishment.
much love
refreshing truths. we make words, we lock language how we will; that is politics, that is being a human being, that is being self-actualized. politics? politics is us! "to make major moves" to sit to stand to speak to be. life itself, done like humanists without mysteries, honest with no hidden icepicks. then we have to be for one another. politics can then be just like organic oranges and unpasteurized almonds - sweet!
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