The PromisE
2009
To be responsible means to promise in return.
To whom is this promise made, and in return for what?
What is the source of your life?
As children we swallowed indigestible lies
that tied us to lifetimes of denial, paradise reduced to a world where
we produce and consume more of everything
but you can tell a child anything, and what we really are
is a seedbed for the future
feeding on the grief of the present.
To whom are you responsible?
What is the source of your life?
They told us we can live without earth and air, rivers, trees, animals,
but we need to grow up and we promised in return.
We’ll learn to listen to other voices
The choice is ours—
can we sprout this stump to a tree of revolution?
Can we jump like the pump in the heart of evolution?
We’ll sit in circles, tell the tales of our trauma
children coming home to a Mama who never left
Cos inspiration never left us here alone and
creativity’s just been wanderin’ around,
waiting for us to wake up and come on home
We are pieces of ancient earth,
bits of sacred story soaked in intellect and dirt
flowing with time’s river.
Beyond the daily data fed to us by liars lies the wind
and inside its spin swings the crysalis
in a future forest world endlessly branching
like questions I can imagine.
And under the branches, we’re seeds in the ground
crouching
ready to change the world again.
To whom are you responsible?
What is the source of your life?
This isn’t a metaphor, friends—
let’s be butterflies, re-entering, wet and tender
Let’s drop it all and pick up one thing at a time
you can’t do anything with your life that you can’t first imagine in your mind
—I’m not ready to bring down civilization,
but I’m ready to imagine it.
Let’s just walk away, or stay and smash the state
let’s liberate grace with a fuse and a match
let’s hatch out in time to fall into fields of life
and give back.
We work from the fringes, from the fertile growing edges
we’re shapeshifters turning from this lost and lonely shore
we are humans, returning, and we’re older than war.
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