Poem: We are heretics

A placard on the street that says “to be silent is to be complicit”

You picked and shaped

those words,

until they made a perfect circle

around your capitalism,

your individualism,

your binaries,

your nationalism,

your whiteness,

your maleness,

your holiness,

your prejudice,

your ideas of what or who fit.

And then you

pulled and pulled,

tighter, like a lasso,

(or a noose)

until only those who look like you

can breathe

in this space.

When you do that,

you are a leader.

Yet, when we shape

those words with

freedom,

with meaning,

looking for beauty,

pointing out dignity, airing out injustice

and stretching until repression and

oppression are thin,

pulling and pulling,

until anyone,

everyone who has

breath in lungs

can breathe in this space

when we do that, we are heretics