today I am
sitting with empire
Tema Jon Okun

this feels familiar
the simple, singular
claim on my
white skin,
on my terrorized
sex, on my
hammered heart

the unmistakable problem
of begging the
crazy bastard America
of resisting the jackboot
assault of penetration
into my pleading
soul,
the weary rejection
of preachers and teachers
of hell

I am telling you this,
the woods, the villages,
the cities, the very continent
is crazy from the
cost of this
daily desire of the
monster armies of America,
fighting for false
freedom, forced status,
incarceration
of hair and head and gender
and hearts, of skin,
of our children,
and our children’s children,
of the evening sky
and our rattling teeth

we need a kind of surgery,
we need words and walking
and silence and stars and smashing,
idiosyncratic proof, glorious
proof that we are not
the problem, we are
the very kinsmen of
our self-determination,
we are the books and
the claims and the
indisputable fuck you
of the problem

we are the streets and
the rain and the workers,
we are the sanctity
of god and
we know the difference
between wrong and
reasonable, we can name
our own geographic,
we are the familiar
everybody and we
love the stars and
we love our feet
in our shoes
and we turn
towards the
soul and disclose
the very why
of the world
and we are no
longer afraid

no matter
what
comes