Comments on The Rise

Hey you. Yes you over there. Wipe that anti-Semitic grin off your face. Your tide rising from the underworld of Great Consciousness. Should I see myself in you?

Listen. Listen so that these words seep into your blood. The way your great grandparents seeped ink into mine. Listen so the flash of your neurons fire in a way of New Consciousness. Maybe then you will understand.

Shall I live in vain? Shall I forsake my grandfather’s name? Shall I let you slowly pass fear as you rise back up again? Like the smoke with which you once killed my great aunts and uncles. My great grandparents burned by your falsity.

Shall I pretend your tide is not rising? Shall I look the other way. Read nothing. See only myself. Believe in the goodness of hopes and dreams left as whispers from my ancestors. Are you coming from me?

To be trapped. To be burned. To be hunted. Have we learned nothing? Have we forgotten so quickly—so easily? So fast the memories become tales of long ago. As if some allegory but no meaning after all.

The ink soon buried underground. A generation. The generation. Gone as God should have them. Not taken. Not snatched by you. The lucky ones. And triumphant ones. Sorrowful ones. Worried ones. Ones overjoyed by life’s enduring.

Shall we live in fear? Shall we live in malice? Shall we live in spite? Shall we be the generation that makes meaning? Shall we fight you to the death?

Perhaps I should tattoo the golden-blue star across my heart. Or better yet ink it on my arm. That ink runs deep you could-have-been friend.

When you come for me, you will know who I am. I will have been the one who said STOP. Who said WAIT. Who said listen. Not my GENERATION. Not our generation.

I will be the one with the good word emblazoned across the heart. Weeping for what you have done. Retreating your waters. Levees built through truth and memory. Buoys fashioned by reconciliation. Life-vests of radical acceptance.

For your sake. Because we are not forsaken.We are the hands of Gods mighty deliberation.