thanksgiving 2024

and so we gather here again as always together in our deepest joys and fears to laugh at humankind's most tragic follies and hold such tenderness we're moved to tears

remembering the ones who have since left us
and welcoming those here for the first time
to honor every loss that has bereft us
and find in every pleasure the sublime

amidst the growing shadows of the empire
amidst the rising waters and the storms
enclosed by dangers spreading now like hellfire
and ancient evils ever in new forms

we'll gather here in every generation
to take lead from the youngest in our ranks
until we meet with all of our relations
to eat, and dance, and live, still giving thanks

Not In Our Name

our ancestors are wearing t shirts too, now,
the black and red ones with Not In Our Name
they're shutting down the offices of heaven
the cosmic businesses that fuel the slaying

they're rising with us, mirroring our movements

because we finally have heard their cries

across the veil where they march in millions

alongside all the peoples who've survived

their shares of genocides and more by tenfold

and lived through holocausts that never stopped

and all of them are screaming break the cycle

oppression doesn't end when it is swapped

the martyrs of millennia of struggle

of every land and people under fire

the dead of Gaza, Vietnam, Chiapas,

the Philippines, South Africa, the choir of

sixty million Africans who perished

in the hells of their captivity and thrall

the hundred million Native people slaughtered

in the willful violence of the settlers' sprawl

have all been organizing up in heaven

with other martyred souls of streamlined deaths

of gas chambers, of witch trials, of bombings,

forgotten peoples robbed of names and breaths

the billion mothers forced to watch their children

starve to death or die of labored thirst

the billion desaparecidos stolen

from their loved ones, planted in the earth

are rising now in this historic springtime

in which we are the gardeners of dreams

the midwifes of this greatest revolution

any living being on earth has ever seen

    the overcoming of the threat of hunger
    the fruits of human efforts shared by all
    the end of slavery in all expressions
    the answer to all of our prophets’ call

they're speaking to us, louder now than ever

it isn't hard to make out all the words

you only have to turn down all the TVs

and radio theater of the absurd

and listen – they are weeping, they are shouting,

with the grief and rage of these two thousand years:

    It is up to you to choose Life for our children

    The seeds of martyrs must be watered with your tears

    Only then can life begin to really flourish

    Only when you take as freely as you give

    Only then will you remember us with honor

    Only then can we begin to really live