i want a good heart .
i want it to be made of good stuff .
i want the stain glass window builder to be my drinking buddy .
i want to drink only the punch of a million gender queer school kids taking free martial arts lessons to survive recess .
i stopped calling myself a pacifist when I heard gandhi told women they should not physically fight off their rapists .
i believe there is such a thing as a non violent fist .
i believe the earth is a woman muzzled , beaten , tied to the cold slinging tracks .
i believe the muzzled have every right to rip off the bible belt and take it to the patriarchy’s *** .
i know these words are going to get me in trouble .
it is never polite to throw back the tear gas .
just like its never polite to bring enough life rafts .
they crowd the balconies where the wealthy shine their jewels .
but sometimes love ..
sometimes real love
is ******* rude .
is interrupting a wedding mid vow just as the congregation is about to cry .
to stand up in your pew to say
“ is everyone here clear on how diamonds are mined ?”
hallelujah to every drag queen at stonewall who made weapons out of her stiletto shoes .
hallelujah to the blues keeping the neighborhood awake .
to the activist standing in the snow outside of the circus
holding a ten foot photograph
of a baby elephant in chains ,
when it’s probably some little kid’s birthday .
hallelujah to making everyone uncomfortable .
to the terrible manners of truth .
to refusing to clean the blood off the plate .
bend this spine into a bow
i can pull across the cello of my speech .
love readies its heart’s teeth ,
chews through the etiquette leash .
takes down the cellphone tower after millions of people die in wars in the congo fighting for the minerals that make our cellphones .
love blows up the dam .
chains itself to the redwood tree ,
to the capital building when a trailer of mexican immigrants are found dead on the south texas roadside .
love insists well intentioned white people officially stop calling themselves color blind .
insists hope lace it’s ******* boots
always calls out the misogynist , racist , homophobic joke .
refuses to be a welcome mat where hate wipes its feet .
love asks questions at the most inappropriate times .
overturns the defense of marriage act then walks a pride parade . asking when the plight of poor single mothers will ignite our hearts into action like that .
love is not polite .
deadlocks our rush hour traffic with a hundred stubborn screaming bikes .
hallelujah to every suffrage movement , hunger strike .
hallelujah to insisting they get your pronouns right .
hallelujah to tact never winning our spines .
to taking our power all the way back to that first glacier that had to learn how to swim .
to not turning our heads from a single ugly truth .
to knowing we live in a time when beauty recruits its models outside the doors of eating disorder clients .
that is not a metaphor .
this is not a line to a poem .
an indian farmer walks into a crowd of people and stab himself in his chest to protest
the poisoning of his land .
a buddhist monk burns himself alive on the streets of saigon .
a united states' soldier hangs himself wearing his enemy’s dog tags around his holy neck .
may my heart be as heavy
as a tuba in the front row of the mardi gras parade five months after katrina .
may it weigh the weight of the world
so it might anchor the sun
so it might hold me to my own light until i am willing to sweat as much as i cry .
until i am willing to press into the clay of our precious lives .
a window .
might our grace riot the walls down .
may the drought howl us awake
may we rush into the streets
to do the work of opening each other’s eyes .
may our good hearts forever be
too loud to let the neighbors sleep .
