Echo of a cistern

Everything is relationship based, place based, both a part of something bigger and a bigger thing made up of smaller things. I have not exercised every element of my freedom. Is the furthest extent of freedom, rebellion, dissonance? Poetry is political but I am not saving anyone here. A blog is not an aide truck, or a cease fire, or a home of solid walls with 10 inches of insulation in the attic. I return to this often. Is every question always a shovel, in the arrangement of words to ask, does this sharpen? Is the goal a fine point to break the surface better than a spread out proposition does. When I was young my parents had me start and keep a conscientious objector folder. Kept in the file folder to the right of my father’s desk: photos of me at protests, some letter I wrote about something political. At a certain point it was not kept up. I haven’t seen it for years. My parents coming from the draft, my dad nearly was, I’ll have to ask him again how he wasn’t taken. Is it this simple? Politics? I show mine through maintained actions. I am not worried about a draft now though, more about the number of guns in the hands of people I don’t share beliefs with. I admire that writers like Hemingway and Orwell went to fight in a war they believed in. Also that there is a privilege in that, to choose how you could die. War is never a great thing and moves in and out of clear definition. I will be no ones uniformed soldier, never interested in dying for my country. I am unsure on how anything other than putting my body on the line could be revolutionary.

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH ME? / I must become a menace to my enemy

- June Jordan, Apologies to All the People in Lebanon