{"id":39849,"date":"2022-05-18T06:48:42","date_gmt":"2022-05-18T13:48:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heuermontage.com\/?p=39849"},"modified":"2022-05-18T06:48:44","modified_gmt":"2022-05-18T13:48:44","slug":"so-the-darkness-may-glitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heuermontage.com\/?p=39849","title":{"rendered":"… so the darkness may glitter."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cHope doesn\u2019t preclude feeling sadness or frustration or anger or any other emotion that makes total sense. Hope isn\u2019t an emotion, you know? Hope is not optimism. Hope is a discipline\u2026 we have to practice it every single day.\u201d <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 Mariame Kaba<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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You are getting two for one today. I wanted to post a piece of music, Our Phoenix<\/em> by Mari Esabel Valverde<\/a>, because it is a heartbreakingly beautiful reaction to the white-supremacist incited and enacted violence and terrorism in this country, Buffalo, NY as the most recent instance. The words are from a poem<\/a> (full text of Our Dangerous Sweetness<\/em> in the link) by Amir Rabiyah<\/a>, who was born in London, England, to a mixed Cherokee and white mother and a Lebanese and Syrian father and who, as a trans poet, explores living at the margin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I thought, though, that another one of their poems is more powerfully hopeful, needed in a world and era where positive thinking is ever harder to conjure, as well as gloriously full of double-meaning. So here’s my daily dose of practicing hope<\/em>. And besides, I can show you what’s currently on my kitchen windowsill, glittering in the darkness …still waiting for blossoms, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cactus Flower<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We flash victory signs in the darkness, so the darkness may glitter.
                \u2014 Mahmoud Darwish<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the sun sets\u2014we set our plan into motion.
Our sole purpose to overthrow<\/p>\n\n\n\n

any assumptions, to change
the course of ordinary thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our work begins by speaking to darkness
and telling darkness    soon   :<\/p>\n\n\n\n

             we will demonstrate through the secrecy of stars,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

earth\u2019s magnetic embrace
how we can be many things at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So much of the work we do
is internal, goes unnoticed, uncompensated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We get written off or not written at all,
labeled freakish, prickled,
rough around the edges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We learn to thrive
in the dry humor of soil;
carry water in our bellies
to quench our own thirst.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We survive, over again.
Adapt. Even after being
carried in the beaks of birds,
dropped elsewhere,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

far from our roots, we grow.
We flourish.
And when least expected, when histories<\/p>\n\n\n\n

not told by us, for us, claims we are defeated,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

we gather our tears as dew.                        We release our anguish,
intoxicated by our own sexed pollen.
                                                              We burst,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

displaying the luscious folds of our petals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Amir <\/a>Rabiyah<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And if you you are in the mood for analysis rather than poetry, read this<\/a>. Or this<\/a> from the Jewish perspective. Or this<\/a> from an economic-systems approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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