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My brother picks up the phone and speaks slowly to me. My arms and legs tingle and begin to buckle beneath me, I am simply grateful I am seated in a car on my way home. “You did good” he says. “Today was a test run. You learned your limitations”. I tell him I wanted a book. So I tried to go to the bookstore but ran out energy. He tells me, I overdid myself not because of the book but because upon exiting the bookstore I joined a march around the block to protest g e n o c i d e. The timing was perfect. I thought it as a sign to join I mention. He laughs while holding his phone almost 6,000 miles away, asserting that I should take care of my human needs and rights especially after my injuries. I laugh again. He is right. I laugh some more but I begin to cry. The book I bought was by bell hooks.

In the preface, she describes how turning away from love in our society “risks moving into a wilderness of spirit” one from which it would be hard to find our way home. Is that what I am witnessing, I think of the picket signs. I think of the lovelessness war connotes.

Have we lost our love of this world?

Are we so afraid and so broken-hearted that we merely theorize about love? But will not stretch our open palms towards it? What does it mean if collectively we cannot conceive of love’s open palm or the love of others to makes us smile at a stranger or cook a dish for friend.  
I like a  falcon in her gyre of words spin in their warning. When suddenly, I hear my brother’s  voice and I am on the ground watching the falcon turn in gyre, his voice soft like when we were kids. I return to his voice, I return to the comfort of sibling love. Each block of joy we have built since children and I cherish the placement of each one.

I think, the world is not too far gone. It is like this. Waking up to the sudden voice of love that will breathe life. Suddenly able to see clearly with awareness where we stand and where our hearts have stood and will stand until the end of time—in love.
Prose poetry draft
Contemplating bells hooks “all about love”
Thoughts: I observed ducks in the lake comfortable in the cold their plumage  warming them. I thought about what my plumage may be. If the plumage were a metaphor what is it a metaphor for. Is it wisdom, is it skill, is it a learned capacity? I pondered  and then I just laugh because my mind is conditioned to find patterns and metaphors that somehow I momentary lost the point… I don’t have to know. I can just sit here and observe & be present.

2. Thoughts: … ☁️
I have lifted the mug to quench my own thirst. I content,—— a middle line, silence, full as I always was find myself beautiful and find you divine. I need no other reason but this deep love of ours here on the spin-off rock to smile.
the alarm rings in Guernica
All wounds open with this one

The first verse of Dalton’s Como tu
“I love love, life.” witnesses as
All wounds speak with this one

Ingram’s interview with Ms.Goodman
the Jews Hamburg taken to the Mintz Ghetto stripped of clothing  and then shot
All wounds unravel with this one

The way I cannot speak the language of my ancestor and the violence it took to strip our tongue away but not our lives
All wounds open with this one


Refaats join Jara
All wounds open

And as they open still mothers and fathers wipe the clean the face of their dead children and smile

My your god and mine have mercy and smile upon us again as these wounds open I begin to understand a smile is a treasure
Deadly Dior
Grave digging Givenchy
Dead bodies still in cells Celine
Children Crying Chanel
Some are still in the rumble Starbucks
Never Again, Nestle the why you funding genocides
I’m lovin’ it, McDonald’s- actually, no I don’t love you funding war
Where dreams come true Disney+, I beg to differ and offer. Where nightmares are funded for children caught in a conflict.
And so many more who to boycott, I do believe I have stumbled upon a long, long poem that wishes to be longer. Don’t forget you money speaks too like words and songs and paintings hung up.
Consonance  

#🍉
Words of self awareness are like harpoons

that hit the places that are already wounded

                From those wounds blood still flowed but now as the second sharp point penetrates

It becomes clear that it is there what we must begin to heal
you grab the fruit but you do not

water the tree

                           then you cry in silence at night without asking

the tree why
Why it can no longer bare fruit

your thoughts circle a dead end street
and scream “BARREN”

But why

Why don’t you just water the tree
Skills, relationships, careers etc

must be watered
Whatever is drying up in us needs watering
as do others in our life
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