10-We Are Gathered Here Today

We are gathered here today

joined by ancestors & spirits

after being kegged & shut away

as sheltered refugees

in dark forgotten spaces

while words resonate in silence

ringing in mute dreams

the whole world is burning

still gathering bones & spewing dust

but with subtle strength

we endure.

We have returned & gathered

in our great gathering places

a pulsating city of hustle & heel

in hallowed locations

on the streets & in the shadows

where words & worlds bend

confronting the heartland

like the Battle of Turnhout

celebrating liberation

peering into sunlight

with poetic psalms & prayers.

We gather together

collecting syllables

assembling verbs &

metaphors that devour tongues

letting stanzas dictate our lives

line after line of

unmoored words

terrorized by rhetoric

that sings in a scattered state

all to defeat words somersaulting

into spheres of oppression & hate.

We gather in harmony

creating word-weapons with

diverse traditions chasing after pure art

stripping souls bare

in a world foreknown

to messengers of the lost

giving birth to vocal gestures

fit for the conjugation of joy

poetry is our life sentence

an implosion of ideas

an explosion of truths.

We gather

re-remembering Hughes’ songs of

dream singers & storytellers

that delight & end in wisdom

writing pieces of poetry

pasted in the past

marking them anew

wondering who is listening

to these disconnected voices

that sink deep into

collective consciousness.

We gather again & again

into a new kind of groove

Steve’s spirit in the

presence of our future legacy

in this time & place

among strangers who love words

here on this bridge between

starshine & clay celebrating

a human anthology of poets & artists

gathered here today

gathering, gathering

once again

the tribes are gathering.