Reflections on the Boston Marathon

I am against terror in any of its manifestations. Any of its manifestations? How many manifestations can terror have? Isn’t it strictly Islamic fundamentalist? Growing up as a black immigrant girl child in Boston during the late 70’s and 80’s, I have to say no. In fact, I have to say more than no. I have to say this.

This is how dichotomy works in the US: there is the legal economy of drugs (pharmaceuticals) and the illegal economy of drugs (meth – or whatever its street name is currently; crack/cocaine, etc). There is legal terror (the pigs) and illegal terror (Boston marathon bombing). The legal is sanctioned. The illegal is not. Everything inhumanely possible is being done to coerce our support for the reasoning behind the legal economy and the legal terror while corresponding attempts are made to coerce us into closing our minds and hearts to the correlation between the two.

If you need it said poetically to get what I’m saying: here it is.

Twin Towers

We are reflections of each other
except I’m on the top
and refuse to look down.

We are reflections
except I’m on the bottom
constantly looking up.

We are reflections
but I stand in the sun
which lights the way.

We are reflections of each other
but I stand under the moon
which lights the night.

We are twins
yet I stand tall.
We are twins
yet I crawl.

We are the twins towers
of poverty and privilege
connected
by an umbilical cord
which pumps
only bad blood.

Oh look!

A plane is coming our way.
Come, plane, come!

We are the twin towers
of poverty and privilege
and there is nothing
permanent
that one plane or two
can do to us.

We can be tortured.
The steel that structures us
can be made to scream.
Cities can be blanketed
in the ash
of our destruction.
Thousands upon thousands
can die.

What is that to us?

Once the wind clears
and time has silenced the cries;
once we have sent our own
to kill and be killed
we will be rebuilt
even higher

as a single monument
to the twin towers
of poverty and privilege.

Twin Towers was excerpted from my first book, In the Whirlwind.