Resisting Empire: A Poem

Mar 7, 2017
9:24 AM

(Photo by Fibonacci Blue/Minnesota)

What are we doing to ourselves?
The darkness is our home.
The bridge between our universe and the sun- the darkness the emptiness the root the echoes—languages ever old and always young.
 
We are the people of the sun.
 
Let us pay attention:
Repair the bridges, Restore the streets, Renew the children
Our tribalism is an island that will self-explode —Let us lean into our evolution— there is time.
 
Let us learn to share the feeling of grasping the colored hand of grandmothers and grandfathers.
Ancient vessels that speak to us beyond our cave—leading the way if we only sit still.
 
Let us sit still.
 
Let us learn to welcome the stranger, to talk about race, to deconstruct around gender
Privileges are blessings to fall at the feet of another and listen deeply into the callouses of journeys that might have something to teach us.
 
Let us sit still.
 
Let us learn to stand at the picket line, to march against empire, to save this democracy.
Where does it hurt? I hurt too.
My healing can only happen in languages other than my own.
 
Let us sit still.
 
Political revolution will begin in our hearts: our memories our imaginations our dreams about one another.
 

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Carlos Rodríguez is an educator at Verbum Dei High School in Watts, CA. You can follow him @CarlosMRodrig89.