Time or location, Original piece from 2002

your wounds have no date, time, place or other label

they wear the cold garment of refusal to heal

and refusal to get worse

they are tender to the touch

as my growing panic stretches around today

and if it bursts

if it explodes

it will cease to be panic

soon it will be time to shapeshift

and rise from the ashes

like the fluttering phoenix of dreamtime

pulling on a reserve of patience and dignity

your strength has no name date time location or label

but it has purpose

haunted by past lifetime sins

scratching out verses and litanies

of bittersweet truth, as you hold my eyes open

and you lean on my eternal roots

the pressure intensifies until we collapse

and remake the reality

my art and the poetry of your strength

give me a thick rope to swing from

What roles will you play?

1. I have such mixed reactions to what I read these days, there is the obvious initial rage and fear and sadness that things seem to be getting so utterly insane. But then there is this part of me that feels so incredibly distrustful of EVERY thing I read online about the government. There is the part of me that says phone calls, petitions, even massive marches in protest are not the only answers, if this has really risen to the fever pitch it seems to have reached. We do have power but those who conduct militarized forces will deploy more weapons, use more violence, jail and prison without trial, and worse than we can fathom. They will stop at nothing to make us believe we have no power. I was a grassroots organizer. I have a very strong activist background. But something deep inside me says right now, this is different. What we are facing is different. Perhaps it has always been different and I am just now realizing it. I am resolved in my understanding that each person needs to rebel in their own way and each of us have some soul searching as to what that needs to be. For some, traditional activism is their choice. For others, resistance is meditation and radical loving kindness that is more expansive than usual. I am not saying I have the answers, but I am suggesting that lots of others also do not have answers, even when they are convinced they do and that they need to tell others what they should be doing. This is a time where we need to reflect deeply and assess what kinds of responses we want to give to the parts of the population that promote bigotry, violence, ignorance and are very good at baiting people into debates that go nowhere and end up in more divisiveness. I hear folks resisting the urge to reach out to other groups that serve up hatred and fear, and I get that. I simply wish to offer up the possibilities that all kinds of change are happening in all kinds of ways every day that are not as visible, not easy to recognize, and that do not get media coverage. My intention in writing now, is not to say submit, be pacified, be silent. I am urging folks to find out what they want their roles to be during the next 4 years and beyond. One way I resist is to not allow anything I say or do or think be altered or dictated to me by any politician, from the oval office or anywhere. I will stop here, but this is far from over.