Begins and Ends with Amina

What does the world

look like?

Like baby Amina,

who holds the phone

in one hand and slaps a place

between her forehead and ear with the other

and listens to me talk and talk

and makes a sense of it

that actively escapes me,

and she includes me anyway.

What does the world

look like?

The way you paint a picture

of the Van Gogh-smeared women

at the beach, your husband dying comfortably,

head in your lap to remind you of the love

that includes you anyway.

What does the world

look like?

Like the boy who is so much a man

that you know now he will leave

exactly as he should, and long before

you have forgotten his weight in your arms.

Leaves sooner than you wish,

but he takes your measure anyway.

What does the world

look like?

The way it did the day we built the fence

around the home of the woman

wishing to stay safe,

around the woman who we together

briefly loved and laid to an extra day

without despair and a longer moment

that includes us anyway.

Whatever does the world look like?

Like the green street that is my home

and the tall trees shading neighbors

and helping them to cross the shifting line

that separates them from me

until the moment of my need,

when they include me anyway.

Whatever does the world look like?

The way our heroes give what they have got,

and call on us for more

to make the point that heroes

come in groups of us

whenever we are willing,

including all the unincluded.

Whatever does the world look like?

Like the winding path you go,

bare and beautiful legs propelling,

your work ahead, the inhuman size

and shape of it, and all the coaxing and caressing

 to include the unincluded.

Whatever does the world look like?

The rest stop on the peaceful stretch of moral arc,

where we can dip our brushes

in the deepening hues of struggle and of conflict,

the message to include all of the excluded.

What does the world

look like to the baby

who has flung a kiss

so hard and far that we will spend

a lifetime happily trying to catch up?

And So I Say

I

Suspicion pulses from those gathered here for trial

My companion believes I’m fair, she thinks I will be good

She has been wrong before—she will be so, again

These others know all that for truth

I say make your judgment, if you will

I freely offer all my sins and pleasures

I do not know what you will do, yet I think that I can bear it

But if the verdict should somehow be that I am not so cruel as charged,

Let the record show you did your best and I did mine

II

What I have to say will have to do

for now,

for this,

for you.

This place is rich

and full of evening dark, and vast

and makes a cozy home

for transient souls,

which is to say

it is a nameless place

for nameless things

from where I wrote to you

before I became the bit that prowled your skin

and kissed so light and tender

you felt no sudden thrill or lasting heat;

just the little boost that comes with the sweet ripening of fruit.

III

What the children endure

is unendurable

They transcend

what cannot be survived.

And we know from knowing them

that were they not tough as turtles,

nor fleet as flying things,

nor comfortable as Friday fish,

nor relentless as wind,

nor guileless as tomorrow’s dreams

of tomorrow,

we could not have gone to there and back,

nor made so much of time.

IV

The earth around us warms.

Our trembling cells

echo in waves

and wrinkle the land.

Soon we will slip our way

to the hot and wet and sweet place of reimagining

and emerge again to repopulate the evening dark.

Rubber side down

This morning, the voices were killing me. But they’ve always been there and often no problem, at all. I’m grateful.

But this morning, the voices were cutting me up. That doesn’t show on the map of my face, but the wounds are wet and throbbing, and who it is speaking is often not clear.

But this morning, the voices were massing with pitchforks, like for some Transylvanian hoedown. What were you thinking, asks one, and then they’re coming so fast,

so hostile the questions—

Did you mean to be so cruel?

To whom did you think you were speaking?

What is the statement that lurks in your question?

What did you think would happen?

How dirty will you get if you do it that way?

Who did this, was it you?

How did you get what you do not deserve?

Will you confess?

When will that happen?

Ad nauseum, ad nauseum, ad nauseum, ad mortem—

jumping in the car a better idea. Traffic’s Empty Pages the theme, but I do got something to show, and I’m carefully keeping the first commandment of motoring—

rubber side down. And the voices grow still.

The Revolution Is Coming: Opening Remarks

Welcome, friends and comradely types.

Here is the list of organizations sending delegations.

As you listen to the names,

as your hearts swell with pride

in the difference we have made,

please imagine the faces of the people

who make these groups synonymous

with justice and sustainability peacefully earned.

Welcome to the delegations from

DC’s GazaBera Shirt Conspiracy,

and from Dayton,

the Obituary for Capitalism Writers’ Workshop;

from Chicago, the Sweet Voices of Reason

and Radical Change;

from just outside of Pittsburgh,

the Beating Heart of Committees

In and Out of Correspondence.

Welcome to the representatives

from North Carolina’s

Action Today, Action Tomorrow, Action Forever,

and welcome to our sisters and brothers from California,

the Rudder and Compass

of the Roundtable of Growers and Smokers.

Welcome to the delegation

from the Bi-coastal Dreamers of Salmon

and Clams and Eating Them, Too.

From damn near everywhere,

Catholics for Real Life

and Joyful Love Along the Way.

We welcome the representatives

from the Moveable Seder

of Jews Who Remember When We Were Slaves in Egypt

and, without irony, Palestinians in Solidarity

with the People of New Jerusalem.

Welcome, also, to the delegation from Michigan,

constantly morphing and growing like Topsy,

the Association of Women and Girls and Men and Boys

and All the Genders Between and Around

and the Workers Against Itty-Bitty Wages

and the Prisoners Solidarity Committee.

Give yourselves a hand.

Thank you.

Please take a moment now

to remember comrades who have passed,

the spiritual delegation of Presente!

aka, All the Friends We’ve Ever Known Who,

with Grace and Courage, Spoke the Truth

and Set Our Hearts and Minds on Fire.

Moving on, now,

we note a proposal

from Laity Naturally Concerned with Everything,

advocating outreach to the Granfalloon

of Drudgery, Cynicism and Bitter Despair,

an organization whose members include

immigrant bashers and homophobes

and a good number of redeemable haters.

This has been moved to the front of our agenda

by the acting convention chair

from We Want Less, We Got This.

To begin, we await only

the delegations from

This Millennium We Are Going To Get It Right

and from the Moral Arc of the Universe Bending.

While we wait, let’s turn to the person beside us

and give them a big, sloppy kiss,

or a whispered message about good times ahead.

Remember our lives together

depend on solidarity and action and, also and inevitably,

shameless exchanges of bodily fluids.

And now, I turn the gavel over to our chair

who will lead us in our efforts during the week ahead.

Thank you, friend.

I’m going to declare a brief recess

while we wait for straggling comrades.

We do have some hard work ahead,

so please take advantage of the moment

for a caffeine refueling or, perhaps, to share a doobie.