2024 MLK Day, January 14 2024 - Danielle S. Rueb (Castillejo)
adapted from my previous poetry and writing in 2020
2024, no matter where you’re at…its Dr. Martin Luther King Day…and I have a Dream the capitalist way…so listen in, to Chavez descendants honor Dr. King’s legacy
February darkness. March curveballs. April spikes. May days. June deaths. July rampage. August outrage. Coronavirus. Quarantine shutdown. Rolls of toilet paper, plundered. Lynching’s. Ahmaud Arbery. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Brayla Stone, Riah Milton, Tony McDade. Manuel Ellis. Elijah McClain. Jacob Blake. Black lives matter. Immigrants in fire, Palestine. Gazan mothers dying. Hostages. Exploits. Smoke that meth, or September opiates, for whatever’s your choicest drug ambition. That’s the situation.
>>>>>>>>>>>> Protest that shit or don’t. We’ll be sitting by. Listening by. Preaching by what we be – be for the least of these.
Out my kitchen window, birds pitching endless fits. Violent, Callous society, looting politely.
News flash: The dow won’t crash. Number 45 all chumped, aglow, while those birds billow, “Why you burning my world, though?”
It begins, old evil powers seem to win.
I push hard to go through, to be she who shows thoroughly hopes more than you’ll ever know.
Trauma don’t discriminate
You and me might dissociate
workaholic high functioning healers, but
emotions inherently bodily
relationships inherently bodily, believers
IN engagement with our bodies
The wounds persisting
trauma for our communal body, persisting
Didn’t know if we would be. Wrecked with pain. Drowned in Superfluous glee.
Opposite ends collide, etched with
A shroud to cloud barbed words from furious skies. Lies!
Fires
Isolated, liars lied
in the name of freedom
genocide in the name of freedom
A gender reveal in the name of freedom
Two cents for planet earth, or when you give birth
The earth ordered to conceal, not reveal its brownness, blackness, immigrants’ value-less, injustices, racists, supremacts. I emplore you, RESIST!
But lest, we divest, don’t betray these dear brothers, sisters, the one you don’t know, because they’re telling us, get off my neck, in the land of the free, where you aren’t free,
Cast off the chaff, will you finally see?
Grief doesn’t end. It begins, again. Repeats again and again. And we are off..
A truly modest grad ambition paid position, agency, my agency or yours, but we are change agents.
Hungry mouths, minds wound, pumped, jumped up on literary academic disillusioned stories for glory. Stories we glory in the ripping.
Red blood coming from black, brown, yellow, red, some white, but don’t forget its red blood spilling.
I’m not checking you,– we GET to begin in the midst of protest.
Offer honor, containment – trust, REST
It’s us. The someone in a system that continues to perpetuate injustices
We are the someone, who didn’t see –it is us who need to see
We must have a sense of justice – sense of radical decency
genocide no longer stands. Not for us.
I propose, you chose to “love those in agony…I know for you and me,
We’ll be the witnessing,
I reckon it’s the now not yet
Because All ashes aren’t beauty yet…
Enter madness people – not because we are heroes but we tasted enough healing – I’m believing
Treacherous terrain…. Hold faith, hope, love, its’ refrain
A hope that doesn’t rush us to a resurrection life complacent
a hope that says I WILL remain adjacent
Notorious RBG and Chadwick’s best with John Lewis imbues us to fight for things we care about – do it in a way, lead in a way, so others join us.
So, you - be more, change more, but don’t leave anymore. We can’t bear that anymore
Let’s bring our faces, bodies, comfort, together, side by side, besides
This is the work of the spirit on our behalf all the time
And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Romans 5:5
So will you put yourself in the narrative? Forgive,
Live bold, free, wild, fight with insight, stand in margins, don’t give up even when you mess up…and I’ll leave it with Dr. King, “"Our separate struggles are really one – a struggle for freedom, for dignity and for humanity," King wrote. "You and your fellow workers have demonstrated your commitment to righting grievous wrongs forced upon exploited people. We are together with you in spirit and in determination that our dreams for a better tomorrow will be realized.”
