after Allen Ginsberg
written as part of the 2016 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 100 Summit
we who were born into conundrum, came into the world as the world was leaving, children of the ozone, the oppressed, the overlooked, of obtuse greed, of oil overlords, of oblong definitions of justice
who asked for water & were given a border, a wall in the ocean, a wall in the air, a wall right down the middle of our bodies, bodies left to sun dry, bodies told they were barely bodies, bodies emptied of blood & rights, bodies whispered into rumor
who were hungry & were given a cell to hunger in & sometimes saw our own flesh transfigured into prisons, running in circles trying to escape ourselves
who drowned our children as a last act of love, giving them over to a better world, gifting them away from this land of chain & drought & lawless law, land that attempts to unmother our mothers, steal us away like we were never here
who were named in the wrong language, told our language was not knowledge, told our knowledge was not genius, told our genius was a disorder, told our order lacked logic, told our logic was brainless, told our brain was dead, told our dead was not ours, told ours was not right, told our rights were not ours, told ours was a foul brood for fear of what happens when we gather
we who gather, gather around corners & tables & ourselves, gather around smoke & drank & broken bread, gather around fire & fire & questions, who know this world is not the world we deserve, who harvest the fruit of an alternate now, the adjacent possible, the should be here, the why the fuck not, the what we owed, the duh, the need, the gift of better we know is ours
we who citizens of our own funk, who know immigrant means family late to the feast, who know ain’t nobody free until we all free, who know shouldn’t be no price on a good life, who dream while waking, dream with our hands
we who build a temple of doors, a church of windows & roads, who say “my body is not a catalog of wreckage, my body is a portal to tomorrow," who call on the power of ancestors past and ancestors not yet born, now call forward every god in us to plant our new seeds
our moveable mecca
where our bodies are the buildings
our land of fresh water & empathy
where there is enough of enough
we erase what does not serve us
we promise annihilation to what fails us
we know fire is both destroyer & mother
we know change is not concept but necessity
we remember hope
we are hope
we are ritual
we are the narrative
we are the song
we sing ourselves into royalty
we have no time to explain how we matter
we are worth worthiness
we need no permission but our own
we ain’t scared of shit
we only fear silence
we know god is a verb
we holy ourselves
we pray by moving
we make heaven wherever we stand
each breath we take
future get realer
we refuse to wait
we revolt against stillness
we dance on the old world’s grave
we bury the way it was
we are our own mecca
we are our own mecca
we are our own mecca
we are our own mecca
we are our own mecca
we are our own mecca
we are our own mecca
we are our own mecca
we are our own mecca
we are our own mecca
we are our own mecca
we are our own mecca
we are our own mecca
we are the first brick thrown
last brick in our new home
we are our own wish
our own promise
our own throne
