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Wang Ping |
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Because we have wings What Is Magic, Raul Asked? And the Birds Guide Us Names You Call Me My Kintsuki
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Because we have wings The sky is an orchestra of colors Birds from outer space And the earth hums under our feet When we love too greatly There’s no rest until we become one A dragon fruit peeling its red scales A heart bleeding without apology We talk with eyes and limbs, watching The world untangle through blindfolds To believe what we know To stand in our own truth Are we meant to fly, to be born with wings? Or crawl, given earthworm’s torso? We perish without magic or wonder No future tense from ancestors’ ghosts A taste of darkness, an explosion of light Blue irises sway in the murky earth All night long we run naked in the woods Wolves in the shadow, hovering like moths The hand that folds light between our breasts We make beauty in the flesh of pain |
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What is Magic, Raul Asked? Birds sing because they have a song in their throats Fish swim because they have an ocean in their belles The wind blows to play with the rivers and valleys Raindrops fall as messengers upon the earth We move with the dance in our spirits Children run as the world unfolds under their feet This is the secret of magic Hidden in our brains The people and their small things If all taken away, what would we miss? The rustle of oak trees at dusk The foaming river outside the window The smell of children coming home Cheeks red from the snow The little thing you say that’s not funny But I laugh anyway just because… The birds can’t be imitated The flowers can’t be colored The sea can’t be dammed The mountains can’t be spoken This is the sound of magic Running in our veins Moving the sky and earth Passing through us like rivers All the noise on earth will die But not this silence of faith This innocence persisting to believe To see more than what can be seen |
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And the Birds Guide Us A dewdrop hangs on the lip of an orchid A volcano rumbles in another ether Something has hit us And we don’t know why It’s April. The prairie Is brewing a new blizzard Cornfields adrift in the whiteout wind One-legged cranes darken the braided river Rings of ice like shackles And the sky in an origami dream At the fork of the road I stand in blindfold Lines of hexagrams, form of the formless This light and shadow-- it’s all energy Same difference in the field of perception Every tomorrow has two handles Every seed contains its own fortune This is the truth to those who still trust A thread so thin, unbreakable Fire from the sea and into the sea—the Big Island—ash from the womb of the earth Children of the rivers and mountains We carry a dream as ancient as the cranes Sailing across the sky, ocean and desert Uttering a cry that’s almost too human The birds have moved on And the fields still aquiver with their spirits They do not think they live Simply each day a small gift |
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Names You Call Me (For Elena, NE, and All Amazon Warriors) You call me Murderer, as you massacre our children with hunger, disease, poverty. You call me Terror, as you turn the world into a Police-State, bombing, gassing, spying, drones to kill whoever, whenever you feel like. You call me “Slum,” my affinity with the forgotten, scrambling a living in the sewer of your filthy mansion. You call me “Marx,” igniting hope among the wretched. You call me “Mao,” surrounding cities with mud, potatoes, peasants. You call me “Che,” whistling Amazon warriors from our jungle breasts. You call me “Whore,” painting breasts laden with milk, buttocks curving like the Amazon, fists taller than the Andes, thighs smashing shackles, guns, nuke bombs. You call me “Mandela,” 27 years behind bars, still singing of dignity for all beings. You call me “Castro,” hugging Mandela, calling his country “a model for a better world.” You call me Monster, pulling the poor, the sick and the homeless out of the muck. You call me “Miras,” daughters from slums, colleges, offices, brothels, factories, streets, woods…fighting for tomorrow. You blockade my path, our road to a shining future. You hunt me with armies, police, CIA intelligence, combing the coast, mountains, slums. You cut my veins, gushing lava of rebel, beauty, ancient souls. You try me at military courts, secret locations, judges behind masks, screens. You give me “Life Sentences,” shoving me into a hole of silence. You shackle my feet, and I gnaw through the hole with teeth, tongue, throat. You slit my throat, and I summon my comrades with thoughts, words, dancing birds. You kill my birds, and I build a temple with mud bricks from the ruins, spirits from stardust. You can kill my birds, slit my throat, shackle my feet, bury me alive, cut my veins, block my path, hunt me down with your bombs, drones and lies…My body is not mine. Nor is my art, songs, colors, names. They belong to my people, children, mountains, rivers, oceans, planet. Call me your Monster, Terror, Whore, according to who is writing History. Call me Mao, Marxist, Che, Castro, Mandela…names blown, blowing with the wind. But nothing can change this: I’m your air, your Amazon, your Andes and Pacific--named or nameless. I am your conscience, your earth. I’m your Mother--dead or live. |
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My Kintsuki
March 3, 2014, Minneapolis, His Holiness Held My Hand To His Heart I’ve tried to calm a storm with a storm I’ve tried to soothe anger with anger I’ve combatted hatred with hatred, evil with bleeding eyes I’ve tried to pay tooth for tooth, hand for hand, ash for ash I’ve pleaded for a kind gesture to ease our daily grind I’ve made banquets, each morsel prepared with prayers for peace My fingers reaching for the sky like charred Joshua trees, radioactive across the red desert You took my hand to your chest A shattered soul between your palms “Never give up,” you said, “develop the heart” And I stopped thrashing against the glass wall “Never give up, no matter what is happening,” And I stopped crying for mercy when stoned by lies, insults, silence This is my promise, Your Holiness To myself and this good earth: I will not give up No matter how impossible it is I will not give up No matter what’s happening around me I’m a mole burrowing a tunnel of love under the alabaster tower I’m a pariah playing magic flute from the bottom of the snake pit I’m a mosquito buzzing kindness into the veins of violence I will not give up Until rivers run free, and mountains no longer slide Until swamps hum with birds and fish among cypress knees Until my heart becomes a temple Each breath a lotus from the muck Holding this world with veins of gold |
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