The seed wars to become a flower.
Democracy lies—calls people power.
Songs rhyme, the words nothing compared
to truth itself. You pause, pray,
Give strength clean away, turn it over
We can rise. With a god of your own
understanding, we can rise, the mystic
reason for the four seasons calling
in the night, dreams the funeral of
ignorance, chopping off parts of a penis
while our infants cry; listening to the
devil, the easy way, “What did the white
coat say?”
***
Great native spirit, aboriginal ESP, a poem
scribbled into sand by Vikings or Celtic
sages, Romeo and Juliet giving English
reasons like seeds to sprout and spread
like a wildfire of color across a northern
California coastal hill.
“God” is the name itself for some, the
goal heaven, and for it we rise.
We can overcome the worst, from ashes
bloom again, seven deadly sins trying to
burrow into holes made before we make
first decisions.
The cliff upon which we walk is forged
to challenge, the echoes of forefathers
and foreskins causing blood to pour out
in lines, the prayer a call of the realistic,
the humble are true when they admit they
cannot without divine help reach the
golden crest that is Peace of Mind.
We can rise.
But we must first admit we fell, ring the
bell that we’ve been to hell.
God, forgive us, let’s mobilize with every
breath to make amends for friends like
wind forgotten with circumcised sips
of flammable liquid passed down from
generation to generation,
Friends in armor, friends who gave
us warmth and farming techniques,
helped us survive winters before
we cast them out at gunpoint, claimed
to found a nation already here.
I’m a white man living on stolen land,
littered concrete and asphalt, helicopters
screaming war while anyone standing
high enough for peace is shot down from
Gandhi to Jack to Martin to Bobby to Oscar
to John of the Beatles, the evil wind
soaring never changed.
We can rise, the minority report flourishing
at times, enough to give us hope
like a birdie between double bogies,
We can rise.
With an ounce of truth told into the
hurricane of lies, we can turn the evil
ship around, apologize.
Admit we raped, pillaged and stole,
see the humanity we are—naked
and part of the earth.
Don’t ever snip earth worn naturally
by children, mutilate a baby against
God’s will.
The baby’s cry is God’s protest; stop
cutting, start listening. Get out of your
car, join me on the walk to Heaven.
Bill Watkins, Traveling Poet 