By OWL (Our Will to Live)
They say, “United we stand, Divided we fall.” But when collapse is at hand Does this campaign slogan bear any wisdom at all? Beyond debate We are post-post still posting Meta modernist takes Take the medicine they called freedom Prescribe your escape Manifestation destiny Your very soul, empire’s new travel destination Where Heaven’s a ketamine clinic away And the late stage is your broadway Time to make your big break To funky town Where its carnival all year round It’s lit, it’s hot, it’s Club Melting Pot The DJ never stops spinnin So you don’t gotta learn the land’s songs to belong And who needs rhythm when you’ve got algorithms? Ayahuasca and energy drinks Skip past every ism to break the ice The band keeps playing The ship sinks I moonwalk the plank Unmoored from the brink Don’t think twice Alas, I remember when I was a captain Compelled by visions of a promised land Evading ruling class contraptions Like a pirate with hooks for hands But I couldn’t run forever Surviving on loots and stolen treasures Now I’m a maroon Unsettled Free from hope Undone Free from freedom Unfettered My independence won out and worn out Finally severed Now I venture to guess where I will stowaway next To dream o’er the red glare Of the ramparts, through the night No flag to be seen But the land was still there Nobody won the fight And God never died Though every kingdom crumbled And humble few were left To inherit the Earth that survived In the meantime, who will harbor Saul? Martyr Loser King Revolting beauties Stumbling to get down with the get down Of this revolution thing Raining on every parade Dropping poems like bombs The bane of independence Make way, for one from the fray I’ll leave a lasting impression Outliving every curse on my name I’ll speak the priest's long held confession I’ll collect dust I’ll beat you to the punch And batter my own face Before you put me on display Museumized disgrace A mummified example Of one who died forging a way To emancipate Away… Away No escape Just fugitivity No fealty Just faith To the dream that lives through me Vigilant A witness to the wake The death of a state A phase shift I pray for holistic change This round of revolution I am a part So I stand apart American I Interdependent individual One creation indivisible From all my relations Mythopoetic transcestral syncretic Politicized synthesis Pagan Christian Vagrant Cultural orphan My privileged misfortune Ancillary of the displaced And the ancients who have entrusted me to say this I declare On the unceded land Of our common ground I lay my shriveled independence down To give way to a sovereignty that need no crown But we must become together And so we must confound What it means to be who we are in America What it means to bear these scars in America What it means to be humane in America What it means to be sane in America We need look no further than our bloody roots Fed by all that strange fruit To know ourselves as living proof Born of revolution Come to roost Our inter-being withstanding every feud Every atrocity, every coup With its terrible, beautiful, omnipotent truth We are more than independent Dreamed by those that came before All but erased by 1774 Dreamed by those that came before Forced to work the killing floor Dreamed by those who came before Who fled and smuggled unfinished war Forgotten though their prayers implore We find a way to receive their love That they somehow found a way to pour Reckoning with blood and mud Underground railroads restored We undermine the phantom fantasy Stillborn Called the American Dream The world’s greatest pyramid scheme We enter a dream dreamed by this land Before she was claimed by any king Turtle Island, home on your back Help us be like you And remember how you like to dance As we forget the score Enough is enough We don’t need an advance We don’t need more This land needs us To live and die well That is her recourse And we need us Like Heaven needs Hell… You should feel torn That means you’re awake Every crisis, a crossroads That needs us to break From emperors and edicts of a prolonged failed state Of the silos that grind up the gruel on our plates If we’re going to be independent of that We must diverge in our willingness to act As if we depended on each other Not indifferent, but in difference And deference to what makes us one another There is no other kind of united Spare uniformity that requires compliance Reinforced by conflict avoidance, exporting our violence To the margins, to the sergeants, to the hoodlums, to the tyrants King warned of negative peace, maintained and lured by sirens For the future is never promising, we always compromise it Every utopia is a mirage, Brave New Worlds beget Islands All alternatives unauthorized I dare you to write it Stop resisting the resistance Find fidelity in defiance We don’t need it to be perfect The messy is messianic Don’t let anyone usurp it The prophetic lives through common struggle Fault lines through shared ground bear the trouble So be the pointy edge in every bubble If people can’t dig it, you be the shovel They politickin like chickens they KFC Whether it's RFK or the DNC Sellin out like it’s the way to be Fast food for the war machine And we seed it and feed it and eat it up Get some equity and we keep it up We will divest when we believe in us I don’t need your vote, I need your trust What will precipitate after colonial reign? I assure you it won’t be a theory of change It’s a longer haul than it is a game If you got the heart, then you got the range Resist dehumanization of any kind With the strength to love each and every life Be it of Israel or of Palestine But that doesn’t mean we don’t draw a line To call a genocide a genocide Comfort zones rightfully vandalized Marginalized zones of sacrifice Oppressor/Oppressed Cane-Ableized Corralled by fanatic missions to metastasize We get a glimpse of our collective suicide This is empire's great design! To consume like cancer and rebuke every martyr Defend and dominate until all is conquered And we are not exempt from all that fodder When we’ve become the weapons that shall not prosper We’ve formed against us We’ve served two masters Now we become one of many Or surrender to our captors So who will stand With heart in hand And say with me I pledge allegiance to the land Of these Altered States of America And to my kin in revolt By which this empire shall fall No nation Will speak for God With liberty and justice for all
This message is such a gift today 💜
May we make our ancestors proud. If we have been disconnected from them, may we reconcile.