Power-Audre Lorde

sisteroutsider:

Power

The difference between poetry and rhetoric 
is being ready to kill 
yourself 
instead of your children. 

I am trapped on a desert of raw gunshot wounds 
and a dead child dragging his shattered black 
face off the edge of my sleep 
blood from his punctured cheeks and shoulders 
is the only liquid for miles 
and my stomach 
churns at the imagined taste while 
my mouth splits into dry lips 
without loyalty or reason 
thirsting for the wetness of his blood 
as it sinks into the whiteness 
of the desert where I am lost 
without imagery or magic 
trying to make power out of hatred and destruction 
trying to heal my dying son with kisses 
only the sun will bleach his bones quicker. 

A policeman who shot down a ten year old in Queens 
stood over the boy with his cop shoes in childish blood 
and a voice said “Die you little motherfucker” and 
there are tapes to prove it. At his trial 
this policeman said in his own defense 
“I didn’t notice the size nor nothing else 
only the color”. And 
there are tapes to prove that, too. 

Today that 37 year old white man 
with 13 years of police forcing 
was set free 
by eleven white men who said they were satisfied 
justice had been done 
and one Black Woman who said 
“They convinced me” meaning 
they had dragged her 4’10” black Woman’s frame 
over the hot coals 
of four centuries of white male approval 
until she let go 
the first real power she ever had 
and lined her own womb with cement 
to make a graveyard for our children. 

I have not been able to touch the destruction 
within me. 
But unless I learn to use 
the difference between poetry and rhetoric 
my power too will run corrupt as poisonous mold 
or lie limp and useless as an unconnected wire 
and one day I will take my teenaged plug 
and connect it to the nearest socket 
raping an 85 year old white woman 
who is somebody’s mother 
and as I beat her senseless and set a torch to her bed 
a greek chorus will be singing in 3/4 time 
“Poor thing. She never hurt a soul. What beasts they are.”

(via holyfuckmeinthemouth)

8.26.12.

112

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I remain who I am, multiple and one of the herd, yet not of it. I walk on the ground of my own being browned and hardened by the ages. I am fully formed carved by the hands of the ancients, drenched with the stench of today’s headlines. But my own hands whittle the final work- me.

Gloria Anzaldua

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