morning! i woke up to emails, joint pain, and genocides fast & slow

November 28, 2024 –
From Hood Communist

0 views

(aka a poem instead of a twitter rant about the fetishization of ‘rest’)

“I am so tired of waiting.
Aren’t you…”

— Langston Hughes, “Tired”

i dream of sleep,
rest long,

unperturbed,
no fitful turns,
no frightened jolts,
no early dawn anxieties
wracking my solemn mind.

i long for sleep,
restoration and refuge
for my bones to settle,
for my tendons to release,
and my breath to end its labored pace
that stalked me for who knows how many days and months.

i crave sleep
and it escapes me –

So long as towns are turned to rubble,
so long as children, women, men (people) are eviscerated
into ash, splatters of organs separated from their host,
so long as my brothers still face the chair
or mysterious injections or a noose,
the method matters little to those grinning
rosy faces gathered like moths to flame,
lemmings jumping for genocide just like their grandpappies,
leaking puss from their joyful gums, they half-heartedly excuse
the bloodlust as
law
justice
democracy –
for some time the state and its vigilantes deputized were content to allow a more slow-grinding
death wheel to sicken, maim, and depress us into submission, disunity, dilution, despair, annihilation,
and yet here we stand,
bent, cracked, crushed, not quite broken.
they return eyes scarlet, supremacy ablaze, with the aim of finishing the job,
feverishly accelerating their pace because they could no longer stand the thought of
our dignity
our livelihood,
our health,
our love, let alone
our power and liberation.

yes, sleep allures,
tempts,
taunts even,
and though it may be ready to
teach me to love rest,

i cannot stop
until
we
are
free
and that won’t happen
until
we
have
power,
until we don’t dream of a future
but
unite
and
build it together,
determine
our
destinies…

…until victory, always,

and on that day, i dissolve into slumber,
a nursery rhyme,
where the oppressors’ reign, the colonizers’ grip,
resides only in ‘once upon a times’.

‘til then,
i step, forward ever,
i move, backward never,
i greet, crisp air of nights growing longer,
i embrace, love and struggle that abounds,
we live,
we build,
we fight.

“Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.” – George Jackson, Blood in My Eye (1971)