Palimpsest
2017“As many of you know, Ruby Montoya and I have engaged for the past year in various forms of what we believe to be peaceful resistance against the Dakota Access pipeline. In July, 2017, Ruby and I claimed responsibility for having undergone an 8-month-long property destruction campaign against DAPL infrastructure in an effort to halt construction.”
(Jess Reznicek)
Written on the manuscript of their bodies
in disappearing ink, their story
lingers, fades
And you won’t have heard of them
these women
because empire covers sabotage with
fresh DowJones headlines of enrichment
but
spiral down like a seed
under the head- lines, the dead-lines
the pipe-lines
read between beneath these lines
scratch the surface and you can see it
An interspecies howl
under papyrus, vellum, parchment
separate the layers to find what's preserved there
Palimpsest—
immutable underlay of truth
On election day
they torched 6 massive destruction machines
burnt em to the suffering ground
Two girls taught themselves to destroy empty pipeline valves
and Acted
their arson inspiring others to Act, boldly
Cut off the supply lines
Go deeper
Today I walk with sticks
four-legged
to ease the pain in me
and beneath this foggy body
feel the sharp animal
of another body
as real as this one
Under this pain, a well body
as underneath this mined-blasted-poisoned earth
is another
waiting in her power
for geology and consciousness to rise
and shake it all off
—Palimpsest
Their names ring through my skull
disappearing beneath darkness
like pipelines
like tales of sabotage against the machine
Jess and Ruby
deconstructive tools of alternate iterations
Like the holy lands buried beneath churches
Like witches
created by the land to defend the land
tortured, burned, and
I don’t know if they’d call themselves witches
yet
Under the Tar Sands
Under the Mississippi River
Under the pipelines, beneath prophesy
I write their names
in crystal green
in azure
in malachite
in armed words guarded by living fires
Protectors
The angle of light is changing
layers separating
The earth has turned enough to tell
turned to burn
tell it yelling
buried tales that must be told
generations of resistance
overlaid with the official story
Encrypted, it’s all there
Subjugated populations rise up
sheer as the Great Divide
Subalterns tossing up portals
like vellum, like papyrus
that’s been scraped, over-written
and buried in darkness––
Genesis is literal: let there be light!
As autumn looms over exhausted summer
surrounded by crumpled flowers
or whispers of interlocking dependencies
we learn who we are
and the moral of the story
or
this is where the tale ends
stuttering a language of longing
Drown in the paradox
strobing
love and rage, love and rage
love
and
rage
A song to guide me
into this one power
As we accelerate
into a silver skyworld
desperate as wolves
inside algorhythmic steel traps
Oh, disciplined anarchists of the underground
we chew off our feet in resistance
we unearth the impermanent pavement
to reveal our secret manifesto
We delay
disrupt industrial anguish and false necessities
the denial they escort us thru daily
We’re the unfinished animal
running from all the dazzling forecasts
Running together like thieves in the night
shaking off the might of trauma
the dust, like wild animals do
Buried underlings ready to rise up
scraping through lies with a fork and a knife
devour the shallow surface
Bared teeth
crouching under economic electronic structures
awakened to the pour of waterfall lies
to be their undoing
Servants of earth and all her calderas
carving every satellite out of the skies
with your courage
Leading the people out of the darkness
So many of us
sensing the remedy
from our barely felt tails
to where the forest grows up and over us
Beyond that insatiable desire for refinement
where we remember all of it
engathered we spark
in your name
we flame
we engulf
we knock em
alive!
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