Note: This is the first Occupy poem I felt good enough to share. More are coming. Enjoy!
This marginalized American body
is a descendent of multiple rebellions.
I invoke
colonists throwing chests
of tea overboard on a cold Boston
night in November.
I invoke
women who realized that the baring
the next generation of Americans
should give them double say
in the country’s future, not none,
and went to jail for the basic right
to cast a ballot.
I invoke
the year long bus boycott in Montgomery
after they arrested Rosa Parks
for deciding she simply wasn’t
going to surrender
her seat another time
to another white man.
I invoke
the spirit of NYC drag queens and queers
who saw cops once more
invading the only safe space they had,
a little bar on Christopher Street
on the last Saturday in June
in the summer of ‘69
as the final straw
and opted to rebel rather than surrender.
I invoke
a too little known occupation
in San Francisco in 1977
in which people with disabilities,
some of whom risked their very lives by participating,
occupied an Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare’s
in San Francisco for 26 days, the longest siege of a federal office
in the nation’s history, which resulted in the signing of Section 504,
a law I still depend on daily.
I am occupying
so when future generations
need someone to invoke
they will have Occupy Wall Street,
Occupy Springfield, and Occupy Together
to remember.
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I fear that the majority of those that are "occupying" haven't a clue what the purpose of the initial most modern occupy was centralized around. I do hope that when you "invoke" and reference the events in your poem that you fully comprehend the historical significance and resulting bi-products that seem to be perpetuating and fueling the flames of injustice that you claim to "invoke." For if the cause is in the hands of those whom do not and will not take the time to fathom the depth of the bureaucracy then I fear we will be only worse off as misguided motives in masses can have disastrous effects. Good write, and kudos for having the fortitude to write politically. Just remember that nothing is really what it seems and it is often at the end of the game that the fog is lifted for all to the see the wolves, where ever it is that they covet.
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