SONG OF THE BROKEN ROCK

Trudging up the rutted road

        eyes cast down

                    I found a stone

marked like a heiroglyph

        purple-red wings outspread

                like a sign at birth

you don't expect

        perfect heart-shaped shard

                as every broken heart

is nothing but itself

        perfection

                more wholly shown

summit view a moonscape

        in my bones the weight

                of dynamited

mountaintops sunk deep

        I crossed then flared my arms

                the spirit yell I conjured

echoed back

        from every blasted crack

                singing to heal

the murderous white

        drone that numbs

                and poisons the air

I felt you there

        so many there

                in the devastated ground

original light-filled holy

        shattered to the core

                the missing

who dance in us

        fierce grace

                those who have formed

mounds for corn

        canoed the rivers

                laid the tracks

dug the ditches

        stitched the wounds

                stifled moans

spread the word

        harvested the crops

                rocked and taught the young

fled the chains

        unshackled the enslaved

                evolved the unions

I feel you now

        in the wind of our unfolding

                redemption's songs

here at the perfect

        broken rock we circle and weep

                circle and sing

and feel the rock the whole

        world holds as we hold

                each other true

the rock we name

        split open

                wild and blessed

sparks released

        that we sink together

                deeper into our knees

and breathe

        and move the rock

                lifting lifted

as we are moved

        broken-hearted

                to rise

Copyright © 2016 by Janet E. Aalfs
Poet laureate emeritus, Northampton, MA
Lotus Peace Arts at Valley Women's Martial Arts www.vwma.org #413-320-3248

A few of the countless poetic voices that inspire and embolden me:

...but when we are silent we are still afraid.

So it is better to speak remembering
we were never meant to survive.
Audre Lorde

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.
Muriel Rukeyser

Don’t you hear this hammer ring? I’m gonna split this rock
And split it wide!
When I split this rock,
Stand by my side.
Langston Hughes

For any spark to make a song it must be transformed
by pressure. There must be unspeakable need, muscle of 
belief, and wild, unknowable elements. I am singing a 
song that can only be born after losing a country.

Joy Harjo 

Our Unnamed Warriors

How many had to be lost
How many at what cost
What's The cost of a better life
For my children and my wife

How much blood had to be shed
How many fathers pronounced dead
Before the world would see
The horror that surrounded you and me

They blamed our warriors for a great sin
Because they could not control the color of their skin
Our soldiers were burned their faces charred 
And our women were forever getting scared

Hanging like ornaments from a tree
They were a reminder for all to see 

The unnamed warriors who fell at an alarming rate
Had unveiled society's wrath of injustice and hate
These acts that caused flames to grow
In our hearts the fire was ever-expanding its glow

These warriors who mothers and fathers saw them fall
Are a constant reminder to us all
Of how far we have come and how far we have to go
I only wish I could tell them so they would know

Know that they are missed and that we still care
That they were apart of the battles that we all share
The battle for justice and peace of mind
And for happiness in a world that can be so unkind
Even if we move two steps forward and one step back
Their memories keep us on the right track

By Destenie Nock January 31, 2016

Black Wall Street

I’d come to Little Africa with Quincy for a better way of life.  He’d heard black folk there had established their own community free of white folk.  They had their own homes, banks, law offices, hotels, restaurants, grocery stores, schools, a hospital and transportation.  We’d been there some four years before the burning of our beloved community on June 1, 1921.

I remembers the day well, Quincy had gotten up early for work, he’d let me sleep in for the mere fact that I was with child and close to birthing.  It was somewhere around noon when I got the first birth pain.  It was my first baby.  Lucky for us we lived three doors down from one of the midwives that had delivered a good number of the babies born in our community between 1918 and 1921, she says the count was 57 live births that she can remember and my little angel was to be the 58^th.  Miss Ella had sent her eldest boy, James Earl into town to fetch Quincy. 

The pain was something terrible.  I tried holding on so Quincy could be present for the birth of his first born.  But the sun was soon about to set and neither Quincy nor James Earl had returned.  It was just around that time; we heard what sound like planes flying over us and Miss Ella told me it’s time to push.  I cried out wanting to hold on just a little while longer for Quincy.  But, Ella demanded I push.  I let out my final push when Miss Ella announced it was a girl.  Just as she cut the cord, a group of white folk bust in the door shooting Ella right in the back of her head. While her lifeless body lay on top of me, I heard a white woman say no more niggers!  She ordered a young hoodlum no older than 14 years old to lynch that nigger baby with her own cord.  I cried out for Keziah – that’s what I would’ve named her after her great grandmother born a slave but died free.