Poems after following the GA on twitter and the latest Occupied Wall Street Journal post and worrying a lot about race and colonialism

Solidarity

When your eyes run dry,

I will cry for you

If you will hold my hand harder

When I think you want me to go away.

When your stomach is empty,

I will fill it

If you will fill in the gaps

In my clumsy affection.

When you are falling down,

I will hold you in the light

If you will forgive me

For not coming sooner.

And if you cannot do all that,

I will still try to help

As long as someone out there

Still means me, too,

When they talk about 

solidarity.

An injury to one is an injury to all

And I don’t know where to fall

In the middle

On the left

In your face

On my sword

On the edge of the apocalypse

Rock your mic check

And the sweet space

Break it down

Open up

Rain check the sky

Lightning fast

Feel the blast

Fall up into

Apocalypse now

The beginning of the beginning

Shout and murmur and fear and loathing and suspicion and compassion

And all of the ands

Are still words on a page

As we’re living with rage

And the beloved’s betrayal

And all that’s left
In the I of the storm is

Lost

I feel lost without the park.

I started to lose it when the tents went up

And the conversations got squeezed out

And wandered away to 60 Wall…

Suddenly there was a barrier to entry

And I am skittish around barriers.

Who are you keeping out?

…You keep out me, when you draw a line in the sand

Or have a glass ceiling or floor or wall or door

(glass is made up of grains of sand, after all)

I am the unwanted

The uncomfortable

The unrequited lover (who makes a mess but usually means well)

And I love you anyway. And I loved the park.

And I am so sad it is not the place that it was: a place where the boundaries were dropping and I was embraced, taken in and comforted. Fed and warmed and given to… things were mostly given though yes, occasionally taken.

That’s still a better deal than I got outside the park.

So yes, screw us and we multiply. So yes, keep fighting. So yes, take it everywhere and indoors and set the place on fire.

But I am still sad that Bloomberg took my safe space from me, and I am not ready to follow you away from the park. If it is childish to honor a space people suffered to protect and defend, then I am a child listening to stories in the monsterful dark.

Please help me fill the night with stories, the long hard winter with novel ideas. Warm me with your companionship.

Please choose the now-and-future spaces with an eye for height.

Make sure the floors are limitless,

Uncountable

Stories so tall

They can fill a people’s library.

Then there might be room for me to sneak in on a breathless word

Or two.

And find you again.

Love,

alia