Clan Between Worlds: We Are All the Same

Posted on 13th October 2016 in Poetry
by Wonkum Mikitchia: Delivered by Video at 2016 100000 Poets for Change Denver: The Clan Between Worlds

 

I see you are in mortal combat with life and life is winning.
Of course it would.
It is the most powerful of the fundamental forces.
Self Emergent. Self Organizing. It persists.
See what you can do to destroy it.
Rest assured. Life will destroy you.
Death, on the other hand, will embrace you dearly.
We are all the same.

its not that way at all
its not what they told you
when you get here you’ll know
we are all the same
you can’t possibly understand that now
there’s only one thing
in this state you’re in
between worlds
birth and death
wrapped in skin
separating you
from your brother wind
going into you
your sister sky
sliding out of you

its not what they told you
they don’t know what they’re doing
you can’t see the transformation
wilderness of dreams
this is not liberation theater
destroy the word
we are all the same

how did you and I become
I don’t mean me and you
I mean the words fool
why do you use them the way you’re told
why give them your attention
when we know they don’t know what they’re doing
limited by racist perception
free to roam this enchanted prison
only one thing
even rule for a fool’s day or two
but you don’t want to be like them
stupid and afraid
we know their hearts are closed
we are all the same

you can’t see the transformation
out beyond a world afield
its all an illusion
between right and wrong
on such a scale that you can only be a part of
love is insurrection
talon on bone
this is our sanctuary
lay down your arms
you are the suicide revolution
only one thing
death your finery
love and art
unite in blood and body part
we are all the same

clan between you and I
they don’t know what they’re doing
they’re stuck in the between
defy your identity
its not what they told you
there is only one thing
when you get here you’ll know
its going right into you
every time you see the beauty
there is only whats in your head man
every time you feel the pain
there is only whats in your heart ma’am

I am Wonkum Mikitchia
I ask of you only one thing
this is our sanctuary
define your identity
we are all the same
its just light and gravity
the great spirits dream
horizon of desire
born of alien clays
we are not differentials
the expectation pool
its a mafia state
how will you heal
we are all the same
when you get here you’ll know
its not what they told you

I am Wonkum Mikitchia
I ask of you only one thing
this is our sanctuary
every time you feel the pain
this is how to heal
there is only one way
every time you see the beauty
its whats in your heart
beyond between
we are all the same

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The Suicide Revolution

Posted on 7th October 2016 in Articles, Nonviolence Resistance, Peace, Poetry, Reflections, Stories

Suicide Revolution

by h. Gibrain

 

At my first suiciding

I wanted to show my comrades

that death is a fine art

nothing to be wasted

noting to be scattered in the wind

I set up a white canvas

to catch the Rorschach Pollock

of my body spatter

that life is not static

and my body in motion

when I ignite

in dervish

my skirt splayed open

flowering umbel

my arms alight

my particulate nature

on display

like food wiped from the face

of the privileged obese obtuse

 

that life should be lived

not for love

not in fear

but in the name of art

and in the art of death

when you release that button

the harrowing screams

shattering bones

splattering fluids of babies bodies

the village animals

and a little ahway al araby

mingle in flight

a soup of sorts

simmering in free space

painting your  face

with the food

that was other peoples lives

 

to put on display

the relationship between

love of art

art of life

the living death of stolen moments

razed lands of decimated cultures

once upon a time surviving on

bear invocations of rain igniting crop

crow mythos of the wonkum mikitchia

darkening the horizon

for centuries

cleansing the terrestrial palette

for the next sun child

and the age of Aquarius

dreams of deer

that make all plants flower

all wind blow

give essence to gravity

manipulate tides

and ultimately

determine my scatter plot fantasy

of exploding in the sky

and drizzling the mist of my life

a condiment on your sloven plate

that you could taste the disaster

and wait for god in her serviette chariot

to dab the corners of your face

 

well

there is food in death

and death is art

too many people screaming about injustice

when maybe

we should be eating more of the dead

imbibing the blood drenched tales

of death’s survival in the midst of thriving lives

and how our children can lead

the suicide revolution

where each each city block is a canvas

where the ultimate expression of love and art

unite in blood and body part graffiti grafted

into murals

telling stories

of futile resistance

in the world of

racism writ large

the ultimate liberation comes

not from fighting

but from loving

and letting go

of the skin which keeps apart

 

 

 

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A Thousand Points of Darkness

Posted on 28th February 2016 in Articles

by H. Gibrain

 

King said “But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. And I see … something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today… the cry is always the same — “We want to be free.”

 

Well, as often occurs between opposing forces, oscillations take place much in the same way that the advantage shifts between the two teams in a tug of war until one side eventually overpowers the other through impulse or fatigue. The struggle between the people that want to be free and the prison guards keeping them in the enchanted prison – the struggle for justice and equality between civil societies and their elected-or-not leaders is a bit more complicated than a simple one dimensional tug of war, but ultimately it comes down to strength, endurance, knowing thy opponent and developing a formidable strategy to counter theirs.

 

It has gotten dark, so many stars came out. In fact, borrowing from Bush Jr., the thousand points of light turned out to be so many more than that since, as we dig beneath the structural farce of governments at the federal and state level, mired in corruption, we find communities, tribes and families; as we start to zoom in to local geographies we see so many points of light that we come to realize people like baby Bush, Netanyahu, Hitler, Stalin, Pot were nothing but a thousand points of darkness – like little black holes which, instead of excreting waste, accrue most of what crosses their event horizon.

 

King also talk about the moral arc of the universe being broad but bending toward justice. This is definitely true: we can see the evolution of the principles of human rights and self-determination to be a mostly universally agreed upon (thought hardly enforced when and where it counts) virtue so much so that after thousands of years of human intellectual philosophical, ontological discourse that such principles became enshrined in international law (again, though, hardly enforced when and where it counts).

 

 

Bush’s crafty writers artfully manipulated language to come off as a language of liberation by focusing our attention on the thousand points of local creativity and dialog, that he, somehow was responsible for, while obfuscating the fact that this notion was created from one of the points of darkness, representing all the other points of darkness in our little world since they are all connected and share the same intentions of domination wrought of racism – the typically colonialist mentality genetically engineered through inbreeding to possess a peculiarly strong sense of entitlement: its very root dug deep in an inferiority complex that stems way back to diaper days and a life of poor nutrition tied to violence.

 

King’s crafty writing artfully displays a language of liberation while it acknowledge an organic process of accretion around the central theme of human rights and self-determination. Human rights and self-determination are principles that are transcendent of any aspect of individual or collective identity centered around chauvinism, gender, race, religion and so on such that the words “gender,” “nationality,” “race,” “religion” and so one become unnecessary forms of distinguishing between groups since we all have a common human identity and all require the same basic needs to keep us safe, happy and healthy.

 

Riding along that moral arc of the universe, as we’ve seen – since King’s time – the struggles have changed in their nature and their frequency; if we turn away from those points of relative darkness that cloud that mediasphere, acknowledging that there is a sort of fabricated clash of civilizations taking place, we can acknowledge that, in the 21st century, people are rising up in greater numbers – shifting the balance of powers in the tug of war and forcing a response. We, the people, globally, are taking steps in the right direction (though some of them wrong steps in the right direction) and we must realize that every time we pull a little they will pull back that much harder the next time so with each oscillation in our direction we will need to build strength and endurance and, with resilience and steadfastness, engaging and enlisting people in the struggle for justice forever increasing our numbers to increase our strength. Strength alone will not do it, but there is a critical mass number floating about out there somewhere in the amourospere and we won’t reach it until we find our inspiration in the peoples of the cultures of this world and their ancestral struggles to bring us to this vantage point at which we now stand – witnessing the near infinite points of light beginning to finally overcome the thousand points of darkness who made their promises while they looted our livelihood.

 

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Yes to Revolution, No to Clash of Civilizations

Posted on 14th February 2016 in Nonviolence Resistance, Peace, Peace Pedagogy, Practice, Reflections, Self Determination

Back during the Baby Bush era, Karl Rove was alleged to have said “there will be no 60′s style revolution.” This was a fairly accurate assessment of the people’s disconnect from the democratic process and the call of the declaration of independence to get rid of a government that isn’t working for them. US civil society was largely disengaged from the political process as indicated by the relatively small percentage of people that vote(d). Perhaps because they are disenchanted, disenfranchised or because they’re living in the pink bubble of happiness in the within the privileged class.

The results of this lack of engagement were devastating – for the entire world. The neo-conservative agenda went into full swing. As outlined in the document “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”, the Project for the New American Century articulated their intentions to undermine the US Constitution and declare endless war putting into motion their version of the Clash of Civilizations (a manufactured ideology that they can say, arguably, came to pass (of course they engineered it as such). So, while they were at work, most of the disengaged were unaware of their intentions (though it was available for anyone to read): undermine the sole authority of the US Congress to declare war and restore it to the Executive branch (realize that this was a primary reason for establishing a democratic republic with separation of powers); gain control of the purse strings for military spending (again, a fundamental principle of a democratic republic -keeping the executive from controlling the decision to go to war and how to appropriate the peoples funds for it); to dismantle the relationship between corporation and government and, in essence, making the weapons manufacturers, arms dealers and the government one in the same – now with the power to declare war endless war and spend the peoples money).

You can imagine the results of this; you live in it: the gross unequal distribution of wealth within the US and between the Global North and the Global South (as it is called); regime change by hook or by crook in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Egypt and so on; those endless wars in some of the aforementioned states, the Orwellian rise of terrorism to sustain the endless wars via the creation of ISIS and company in the very same and dubious way that the US organized the Base (Al Qaeda) to undermine the USSR in Afghanistan to establish their place on the Grand Chessboard… and so on.

The thing about megalomaniacal psycho-sociopaths is that they are, in fact and by definition, unaware of how they affect those around them and, similarly, disconnected from how those they are affecting feel about them. They can get away with their behavior for a little while, especially with the idealistic, well-intentioned and/or naive among us. Eventually people get hip to their game and their behavior becomes unsustainable. This can be expressed in a lot of ways but I think it is most importantly, for our sake, exemplified by the fact that few military engagements since the end of the Second World War have been successful; the ultimate outcomes of such incursions was that the moral legitimacy of the indigenous peoples percolates to create some version of non-violent “armed” resistance and finally revolution: think Rose, Orange, Jasmine, Crimson, Denim revolution, think Gandhi and King and Arab Spring. For all of the successes and the relative failures what is taking place may be described, in part, as the moral arc of the universe bending towards justice, that after a long train of abuses people get smart and organize and take it upon themselves to change their situation. That was the very nature of the US revolution as much as it is the nature of the armed resistance in Palestine.

What we are witnessing today in the US Presidential Circus is a complete shift of Karl Rove’s prediction from a period of disengagement (engineered or otherwise) to a period where they thoroughly underestimated – thanks to their disconnect from civil society – the power and potential of a disenfranchised, organized peoples who were sick of the status quo (the rich stealing from the poor: the government stealing from its citizens) to stand up to the power elite, essentially spit in their face while they use every tactic in the book and even invent some new one’s, to try to shut democracy down.

If there were not a leader, Bernie Sanders, who appears to be resonating with a YUGE contingency of the American electorate, we would probably not be organically converging to Sanders’ camp. It’s good that he’s here now and whether he wins the election or not we should remember the oscillation between the “no 60′s style revolution” Rove predicted (the sleeping sheople) and the invigorated engagement we seem to be witnessing and a part of now. WE have to remember that there is a very powerful force that is always engaged in its sole purpose: to use the tools of this democratic republic to actually undermine democracy. From a Newtonian frame of reference, if we want to keep the system from slipping deeper/back into tyranny, we are going to have to be as organized and powerful a force as the establishment. If we are going to get it to move towards justice we’re going to have to organize, strategize, and work harder than they do. Their are so few of them and so many of us. Sander’s has shown, through the financial and social support he gets, that if we each contribute a little money, a little love, a little blood, sweat and tears, we can easily over power those who are working so desperately to keep us locked in the enchanted prison and likely, with the right attitude and intention, send them to the asylum where they belong.

Without a leader we may have to organize and act on our own into the future.

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Where have all the flowers gone?

Posted on 30th January 2016 in Articles, Nonviolence Resistance, Notes, Peace, Peace Pedagogy, Practice, Self Determination
By h. Gibrain

Not long ago I was standing in a veritable war zone amid the tear gas, rubber coated bullets and stun grenades looking at the little yellow flowers I was unfamiliar with and thinking about how the western main stream media portrays this particular conflict in the usual fairly unbalanced thought-bytes and the only lives that are ever considered are the human ones: some humans matter more than others but the rest of flora and fauna has, essentially, no representation in the media and apparently doesn’t matter at all.

We all know how important the environment is – ever since the word came to be in use – and, as a culture of refugees, colonialists, conquistadors and anything but the indigenous, we are indoctrinated in a culture of denial and disconnect from nature (the environment outside of your skin) and our minds and the language we think with does not contain the right sequences of words to express or question not only human rights and equality in the eyes of international law and human rights law (if that’s your thing), in the eyes of god (if that’s your thing), through a lens of your indigenous roots on Earth (regardless of where you’re from and all of the defining characteristics of your identity), but we never consider the impact of human conflict on the environment.

Trying to unravel the entangling alliances between state parties is as angrifying as actually understanding the often dubious relationships, based on economic and military power, which reak havoc on innocent people the world over. I’m specifically avoiding examples because there are so many to choose from I don’t want to single out one perpetrator over another and draw a chorus of “what about the others’ “. Besides that’s not my point. My point is that all of that is somewhat irrelevant – the behavior is basically universal in that people are making, selling, buying, and using weapons to kill innocent people and it’s generally not sanctioned by the respective civil societies of the nation-states doing the killing. The underlying issue, which gains absolutely no attention in the press, in social media, from political pundits and the politicians themselves, is the simple set of questions everyone should be asking themselves with their morning coffee, afternoon cocktail, dinner and a joint, is “Who is making all of these weapons? Who is selling all of these weapons? Who is using all of these weapons? And why are they being made, sold, bought, used and not regulated in any consistent fashion, let alone produced at all – when they have only one purpose?”

 

I’m not gonna answer that simple set of questions. I have my own thoughts and beliefs about why this is taking place. The once in a while that I can bear to think about it I just ask myself “why isn’t everyone talking about this and trying to do something about the way these forms of commerce take place?”

Generally, energy flows where attention goes so let us all put some form of attention to this issue. It can be in the form of prayer, mediation, poetry, music, dance, food, letters and phone calls and general lobbying of government officials and weapons manufacturers, letters to editors, peace journalists can participate in focusing their attention on this matter as well. Of course, there are more than one hundred and ninety-eight methods of non-violent armed resistance according to one Gene Sharp (If you’re reading this you know how to use a search engine). I can’t do all 198, but I try a few here and there in a way that doesn’t interfere too much with my white male American middle aged middle classed privilege. I’m asking you do something too. Few are guilty, all are responsible.

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Untitled

Posted on 16th July 2015 in Poetry

– h. Gibrain

we will build a playground
of our commonalities
on no one’s land
where we meet
for food and drink and song
to watch the children perform
the strange ritual they’ve invented
to remind us
the sounds of their voices
are not differentiated by the gods
nor do they fall prey to demons
when you pick up
the gun before the pen
when you kill
before you are willing to die

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