Thanksgiving...poem for Esperanza Martell and Leonard Peltier

thanksgiving* by ‘bro.zayid’

( for esperanza martell and leonard peltier**)

on this day

at this ritual hour

baptized in the blood of genocide,

at this feast

celebrating the plenty of the few

at the expense

of the famine of the many,

at this ceremonial bludgeoning

of ideas and of traditions

and of continents

we say ‘ase...

and we give thanks

thanks for being able to see

this perverse communion

of dominance and exploitation

for what is truly it really is,

thanks for being able to see

this obscene rejoicing

of their blond bearded ancestors

who cut off the hands and the heads

of those who fed them

and then took their land,

for being able to see thru all of this

we give thanks and we say ‘ase…

and we give thanks...

thanks for those who got us here

to this moment,

thanks for those who survived the holocausts

that birthed this paradox of plenty

with the blood sweat and tears

of their captive labor

and we say ‘ase…

for those with lionhearts and ancient memories

who refocus the painful confusion

confronting our eyes,

for those who teach us to envision the earth

free from those who wd even colonize corn,

 

for those who teach us that we are different

from those who wd open sores in the sky

and turn the sun against our skins

we say ‘ase…

who teach us that we shd want

to be different  from those

who fed the atlantic our ancestors flesh and bones

and who then polluted it with their own filth

on top of all that

we say ‘ase…

and we give thanks

for those who got us here,

who endured the atrocities

that accompanied their sacrifices

and we say ‘ase…

for those of our prize-eyed elders

who remind us of even worse times

and who tried to keep our families together

against the savage agendas of the butchers,

for their anchor

we say ‘ase…

for the worry and love and pride

we see in the eyes of our elders

whenever we question

the folly of their adaptations at their dinner tables

we say  ‘ase…

for those who mourn and fast

while the conquerors’ descendants feast

we say ‘ase…

and for those who resist

and who continue to engender resistance

we give thanks and we say ‘ase…

and so

at this hour,

at this instance of institutionalized

gratuitous pity on the feastless,

we too give thanks...

thanks for those who endured,

thanks for those who got us here

thanks for enabling us

to see this charade for the farce that it truly is

and we say ‘ase…

and we live for the day

when no children are hungry anywhere in the world,

when war is reduced to museum wax,

when all forms of oppression,

are buked and scorned in all places,

and we live for the day

when the sun is again on our side,

when the earth is reclaimed for everybody,

when the sea is cleansed,

when the sky is healed,

and when justice is served…

and we say ‘ase

‘ase

‘ase

‘ase

‘ase

‘ase…

*thanksgiving…is a day of mourning, a holocaust memory marker for those indigenous to this land, as it should also be for the  descendants of afrikan  slaves…they don’t feast on turkey; they fast...

and mourn the loss of 100 million of their ancestors instead…

**Leonard Peltier, Native American political prisoner. In prison since 1976...

‘ase… meant here to be done in call and response fashion, used in the Ifa Tradition it is Yoruba for ‘so be it'…a traditional Afrikan forerunner to ‘amen'…

©1993 all rights reserved

Proud to be Oglala, Leonard Peltier

SelfPortrait, Leonard Peltier

Day of Mourning Plaque, Plymouth, Massachusetts