Carry the Stones
Don’t forget to sing the death song
out loud, what they have done
becomes vague, drifts in memory and mixes with TV
I’m trying to remember, wasn’t it Yellow Thunder killed
in the snow by white men outside a bar in South Dakota
while white women looked on?
It is important for me to know, to keep these stones alive
to hold them in my palm and under my tongue
smooth like the river bottom the coolness drawing strength
from warm skin, it is alive these stories we must carry
don’t let them fade blurred into this thing they call the past
which demands of us to forget
and stumble towards their future
The children of Palestine throw stones at tanks and bulldozers
the bullets take the children down, for the crime
of throwing history alive, at the soldiers that come
with death and forgetting.
We too are familiar with this version of death and forgetting,
it is our national disease
These heavy stones carry us to the bottom where
Emmitt Till and Tamir Rice run hand in hand from the river
dreams folded up like tiny wings,
they will kill children
This is all you need to understand
to know what we are up against
they will kill children on purpose, on accident
by default, through economics, starvation
with bombs, indifference
Chant down the names through time
on and on this river of sorrow
Renisha McBride, Tina Fontaine, Sandra Bland
Eric Garner, Phillip Quinn, Freddie Gray
I want to set pink flowers adrift for you all
watch the current carry them to a place where your smiles
are a daily sunrise and not frozen in time
What they have done, Yellow Thunder
bleeding in the snow, carry it
taste the tears freezing on the skin
carry the bruise of these strange fruits
dare a gentle act in a brutal world
and then
sing the death song
out loud
carry the stones
fill your pockets
carry the stories
build circles of remembering
circles of stones
don’t forget, don’t ease into
and get comfortable
with that forgetting
carry stories
fill your hands
with clear water,
the weight of history is good for us
it holds us here
it keeps us here
where real life goes on
round and round
and does not forget.
(For Sha Cage)