Americanaan

A story is a complicated thing

A book is nothing more than ink and page

But songs of freedom, we must help to sing

There are no words for this ancestral sting

this godless cruelty that stains our age

A story is a complicated thing:

a burning bush, a promised land, a king,

the truth of them is difficult to gauge

But songs of freedom, we must help to sing,

and help rewrite the lyrics, or else bring

a freedom made of genocide and plagues

A story is a complicated thing

to make the roar of guns sound like cha-ching

and endless war look like a higher stage

but songs of freedom we must help to sing

to make his story ours, to spread our wings,

and cover this whole land with truth and sage

A story is a complicated thing,

but songs of freedom, we must help to sing.

This is the Year (5779)

“O sing unto the Lord a new song;

Sing unto the Lord, all the earth!

Let the skies be glad, let earth rejoice,

Let the sea and all within it thunder praise!”

- Psalm 96

This is the Year

after Martín Espada, and all visionaries

This is in fact the year that squatters evict landlords,

as we occupy all streets / all city halls /

This is the year that torture sites

are painted into Freedom Squares

Boards of Trade

are made Room & Board

Tent cities vanish into sanctuaries

& homeless humans

move to human homes

Let the prisoners be freed

Let the refugees return

Let the workers get some rest

Let the organizers sleep

Let the truth-speakers read novels

Let the poets write about rivers

Let the rivers fill with fish!!

Let the land and everything it holds exult!

& Praise you People / praise your Rage

come ye drummers / come ye sousaphones

come you hordes of righteous screamers

Bless this Music of your thirst

for Justice, your hunger for Love

This is the Year that Water Protectors on horseback

storm the White House & throw a powwow on the lawn,

& the youth of D.C. swarm around

to cover the building’s bloody whiteness over

with technicolor prophetic graffiti!

This is the year we throw barbecues in every park

to celebrate the fact that all the legal papers have been lost

& every blessed family seeking posada has found it

This is the year the only fears that students feel

walking into school are about whether

they’ll make friends / do well on oral reports

and pass their classes

This is the year the Kochs & Goldman-Sachses pay their taxes

Washing dishes / filling prisons with their fat cat class of fascists

This is the year a law is passed prohibiting cops from gathering

in groups larger than two / unless they trade their guns for hackey sacks

This is the year that Dred Scott resurrects from the Calvary Cemetery

to lead a seige of martyed ghosts upon the hosts of Capital

This is the year that Moses & the Old Testament prophets

go toe to toe with Israeli soldiers / turning bullets into olives

This is the year the war engineers

load their drones with seeds of fruit-bearing trees

& M16s are melted down to garden shovels

This is the year that churches have a shrine for every person

Buddha meditates beside a crucifix while Krishna plays

This is the year that makes a century

The year that trumps the sleepiness of history

The year that man & the likes of him are deported

to formerly colonized islands

where they are sentenced to liftetimes

of land & water reclamation service

This is the year we use their money to pay off each other’s debts

The year We the People forget to forget

The year we turn off the reality television show that governs us

& start to govern our own reality

This is the year Mount Rushmore erupts with native flora & fauna –

sweetgrass growing out of Teddy Roosevelt’s nose

magpies flocking across George Washington’s wig

& the moutain becomes wild & sacred again

This is the year that banners unravel

& barbed-wire fences crumble,

the year wage-slaves take over

as the stock   market        topples

                        so the last will be first

                                    and the first will be last

and we’ll give what we can

and take what we need…  

This is the year food & clean water are free

& gas is too expensive for everyone

In fact This is the year we remember
why

we cannot buy

or sell the Earth -- 

                                    (we are Her)

  

If Occupy began
as a Vision

of people having the debts that crippled them cleared,

then This is the year…

If #BlackLivesMatter began as a Vision

of people walking the streets without fear,

then This is the year…

If every Movement begins as a Vision

of People empowered in body & spirit

Then this is the year it is so.

So,

Let all the trees of the forest sing for joy

                        before the Eternal…

Let the rivers clap their hands,

Let the mountains sing in chorus!

and if eyes are eyes,

… so may every silent mouth,

dry as thirsty dirt,


  

Open

       with the music  

  

         of Justice.

The Song

“My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”

– Isaiah

Come, let us go

to the house of all prayers,

where the thirsty are given clean water,

and the hungry are fed, and the air

is as fresh as the first morning light,

where nobody is right,

cause nobody is wrong,

where you walk through the door

and hear the sound of a song…

there’s a wall to the east

where all instruments hang –

there’s one waiting for you,

and for me, in the jam

in which rhythms and voices

and languages merge

into one universal hymn,

old as the earth

come, let’s go now

to that house of all people,

that place where we all can dance in our own way,

and pray, and give thanks

for the ones who kept living,

and whispering

the vision

of this home,

this day.

Testament

Now they’re caging our babies and quoting the Bible

The same scriptures that slave-owners used to claim justifiable

Chaining and shipping human beings by the millions

In the bottoms of boats, ripping parents from children,

Familiar? Now our demons come back with a vengeance

Slavery never left / Check that 13^th amendment /

While they preach about freedom and defeating the terrorists

Cops line up in riot gear to bulldoze grandparents

And they’re still sayin “We can reform it,” while nowadays

Oil execs say “If we kill you, no foul play”

And Michigan imprisons Reverends who expose it

While more bodies wash up in the river, like Moses,

Now they’re caging our babies and quoting the Bible

To our faces, while their agents terrorize kids with rifles,

As if Jesus would do that, as if we can’t see through that,

As if Love Thy Neighbor really means Act Genocidal

As if there were no decency left in the world

As if words have no meaning, as if They were eternal,

As if our faith’s as hollow as their broken treaties

As if we aren’t out marching, shouting our needs concretely:

“From Palestine to Mexico / Border Walls have got to go”

As if their walls can’t fall just like old Jericho,

As if God was their property, and the Kingdom of Heaven

Was a world at war and not a world of brethren.