Maybe Christmas means a little bit more...

Far Away in a Manger (another new poem for the holidays)

Far Away in a Manger

Hail Mary, full of grace

Did childbirth hurt on that first Christmas

Or was labor immaculate too

Free of contact

Free of pain?

Blessed art thou among women

If that were truly the case

Pray for us in our hour of death

Because we seem to be racing toward it

O come, O come Emmanuel

To ransom faith from religion

To remind those who claim to follow

That love still covers multitudes of sins

Until the Son of God appears

Not that they’d recognize you today

Because you’re not white, or Protestant,

Or born in the United States

Rejoice! Rejoice! And mourn in lonely exile

Kyrie eleison! Christe eleison!

Oh, the little town of Bethlehem

Seems light-years and centuries away

From our land of the free

Our home of brave believers

Who disregard and disrespect the stranger

Who mock and ignore the poor

Who hide our nation’s sins under a bushel

And tear them from the pages of school textbooks

How far away is that manger now

As we trade no crib for a golden ballroom

And worship a painted calf

Parading in the skin of a bull

The only lowing of cattle

Is the bellowing

From the pulpits of government

The baby is crying

We should all be crying

Blessed is the fruit of thy womb

Of all wombs: red, yellow, black, white

Both foreign and domestic

Created in the image of God

Endowed with inalienable rights

The stars look down where they lay

To see what? —

Hail Mary, full of grace

Remember us in this, the hour of our death

We do not live in the blessings of the immaculate

We live in the world of touch and pain

Where beings from man to woman and back again

Must bump against

The bulk of the other

All day, every day, and I imagine all that bumping

Must be what causes us to hate each other

Enough to put people in cages, enough to bomb innocents

Be near me, I pray, our King of Peace. Amen. Amen.

© 2025 Sean Taylor

Keep Christ in Christmas? Here's How!

Incarnate (a new poem for the holidays)

Incarnate

They say the secret miracle of Christmas
Is Immanuel, God with us,
They say it is the Word becoming flesh
And dwelling among us.
I hear their words,
But I feel they miss the point:
We are already incarnate.
Here from the moment we stood upright,
The day we fashioned clubs,
The year we scribbled pictures onto cave walls.
God has always been with us
Because we were already here.

Some say the meaning of Christmas
Is the newborn king,
The Prince of Peace, the son given,
And yet again,
The words fail to reach
Our incarnate ears of flesh.
Lips praise peace, hands and wills abhor it,
A grand idea, but it’ll never work

In the real world of mucous and muscle.

A beautiful notion fluttering too high above the garbage
For us to attempt,
So we sing songs about it instead.

(c) 2025, Sean Taylor

When Religion Is Confused with Politics

Thoughts on the Murder of Charlie Kirk

 You don't take a man's life because you disagree with his statements, no matter how bigoted or backward. You don't take a father from his family because you think his words are dangerous. 

You don't do it if the target is conservative. You don't do it if the target is progressive. 

Words will always be dangerous. That's the promise of the Bill of Rights. You fight them in the public forums. You fight them with argument and voting and policy. Anything less is to deny the goals of our "great experiment" and devolve into chaos. The answer to existing chaos isn't deeper and more chaos. 

Even if he felt empathy was an idea made up by the "wokes," I still feel for his children reeling from the loss of their father, his wife mourning the loss of her husband. 

You can play the "but they..." game all you want to find ways to justify or condone or even revel in today's actions, but there is no level of "but they..." to justify it. 

And I'm once again reminded of what John Donne says far better than I can...

DEI and the Teaching of American Literature

For the record, as a lit/comp teacher, I integrate writing from all racial/cultural lines possible within a given unit. For example, for the founding documents section, we not only look at the Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights, we also read selections from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl so students can see how the US failed to actually implement life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness promises to those who weren't white, male, or land owners. 

In our unit on the Individual and Society, we examine writing from Booker T. Washington, Emily Dickenson, T.S. Eliot, and Walt Whitman, along with an extended study of American Born Chinese (the graphic novel). 

In our unit on Power, Protest, and Change, we look at the literature that confronted inequity and led to changing status and rights for women, workers, and African-Americans. This includes works by Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Abraham Lincoln, Langston Hughes, Upton Sinclair, and an extended study of Kate Chopin's The Awakening.

In our unit on the importance of setting, I give my students a choice of Gatsby, Their Eyes Were Watching God, or Huck Finn (with parental approval), along with a few short selections including Judith Ortiz Cofer. 

In our unit on what America fears, in addition to The Crucible (and studying the Red Scare and McCarthyism alongside it), we also cover "The Masque of the Red Death" and how even in Poe's day, the rich set themselves aside in a place of safety, leaving the rest of society to suffer. 

In our final unit, we study and write short stories, including those from Alice Walker, Hemingway, Poe, Louise Erdich, Bierce, and Raymond Carver. 

Finally, the students are allowed to read a book of their choice, as long as it is written by an American author, and relate how the ideals and characteristics of American society and history are reflected in it (fights for freedom, equality, liberty, etc.)

Even with all this integration, I still feel it's important to set aside time as a nation to celebrate those who have been historically forgotten, abused, or even are currently being maligned. 

American literature and American history is the story of a baby country being born and still growing. Hopefully, we can realize that we aren't an adult country yet, but still a growing adolescent and learn that we are still trying to become a land of the free, where all people are created equal and have equal access (not just equal freedom) to the unalienable rights promised on our birth certificate.

And this is why I believe I've finally found myself as a Literature teacher and as a citizen.

Letter from Episcopal Church leaders on Trump administration immigration executive orders

Dear People of God in the Episcopal Church:

Yesterday, Donald Trump was sworn in as president of the United States. We pray that he and all of our elected officials will, in the words of the Book of Common Prayer, have the wisdom and strength to know and to do God’s will and be filled with the love of truth and righteousness.

Even as we gave thanks for a peaceful transfer of power, we learned from news reports that the new presidential administration has issued a series of executive orders that are a harbinger of President Trump’s pledge to deport undocumented immigrants at a historic scale, restrict asylum, and direct other immigration actions. We read this news with concern and urge our new president and congressional leaders to exercise mercy and compassion, especially toward law-abiding, long-term members of our congregations and communities; parents and children who are under threat of separation in the name of immigration enforcement; and women and children who are vulnerable to abuse in detention and who fear reporting abuse to law enforcement.

As Christians, our faith is shaped by the biblical story of people whom God led into foreign countries to escape oppression. Exodus tells us the story of the ancient Israelites escaping slavery in the land of Egypt and wandering in the wilderness without a home. In Leviticus 19:33-34, God commands that we remember this sojourn as part of our own story of faith: “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.”

Now, as Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:12-19, we are no longer aliens. Christ Jesus has made us citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. As we read in 1 Peter 2:9-12, we have received God’s mercy, and we must demonstrate this sacrificial love in our lives and deeds. Because our true citizenship is not here on earth but in heaven, we are called to transcend the earthly distinctions made among us by the leaders of this world. We must proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is promised to the persecuted and answer Christ’s call to welcome the stranger among us. 

This vision of God’s kingdom, this new reality, is the one to which we Christians are pledged in our baptism above any political preference or policy, and to which our church must bear witness through word and deed. This sacred call shapes both our churchwide commitment to stand with migrants and the ministries of congregations across our church who serve vulnerable immigrants and refugees in their communities.

Since the late 19th century, The Episcopal Church has followed this call by welcoming immigrants and refugees to the United States, and today, Episcopal Migration Ministries is one of 10 resettlement agencies through which refugees enter this country. Our Office of Government Relations is a persistent advocate for immigration resolutions adopted by General Convention, and works with ecumenical and interfaith partners to urge compassionate and humane policies that at the same time recognize the need to protect borders and address security threats. Thousands of Episcopalians participate in this ministry of advocacy through the Episcopal Public Policy Network.

As more immigration enforcement policy changes are announced, our churchwide ministries will continue to provide practical pathways to protect the most vulnerable among us. We invite you to join us by:

• Advocating with our members of Congress by using this action alert to take action to protect immigrants, known as Dreamers, who were brought to the United States as children and have lived here most of their lives. The long-standing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that offers a respite from the fear of deportation is at risk, and Congress must take action. 
• Standing against mass deportation using this action alert, which would have severe consequences for our communities and economy.
• Supporting orderly border management that is proportional and humane and respects the right of asylum.
• Supporting programs that protect vulnerable groups of people, including Temporary Protected Status (TPS), Deferred Enforced Departure (DED), humanitarian parole, and the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.
• Speaking out against anti-immigrant rhetoric and actions, including race-based targeting, vigilantism and violence, family division, and detention and deportation without charges or convictions. As Christians, we must stand against these expressions of hatred and fear with a clear witness to our sacred promise to respect the dignity of every human being.
• Encouraging our congregations to use the resources of the Office of Government Relations and the Episcopal Public Policy Network as we embody the Gospel through direct witness on behalf of immigrants in our communities.

Across our church, migrants are members of the Body of Christ and part of our congregations and communities, and our common life is richer thanks to their contributions. To our siblings who are at risk of deportation or of being separated from those you love, know that your story is our story, and your dignity is inseparable from our own. We stand with you, and we will face these challenges together.

As one church united in the Body of Christ, please pray especially for families who live under the shadow of separation, and for all who seek asylum for protection from persecution. Pray, too, for the people of our congregations and dioceses who work tirelessly to serve immigrants and refugees, and who now face new and heartbreaking challenges to their ministry.

Finally, as faithful Episcopalians have done for decades, please join us in giving generously to Episcopal Migration Ministries and its ministry with refugees seeking a new life in the United States.

In Christ’s Peace,

The Most Rev. Sean Rowe
Presiding Bishop

Julia Ayala Harris
President of the House of Deputies

https://www.episcopalchurch.org/publicaffairs/letter-from-episcopal-church-leaders-on-trump-administration-immigration-executive-orders/

When They Cry "Peace Peace"

A Reflection on Peacebuilding and the Dangers of Conflict-Avoidance as False Peace.

by Billie Hoard

For from the least to the greatest of them,

everyone is greedy for unjust gain;

and from prophet to priest,

everyone deals falsely.

They have treated the wound of my people carelessly,

saying, “Peace, peace,”

when there is no peace.

They acted shamefully; they committed abomination,

yet they were not ashamed;

they did not know how to blush.

Therefore they shall fall among those who fall;

Jeremiah 6:13-15

I am an Anabaptist Christian and am therefore a member of one of the historic peace churches. I am also a committed antifascist and I am dedicated to queer and trans liberation. To my mind these three commitments (Anabaptism, antifascism, and queer liberation) all reinforce one another. At the same time I am very well aware that a lot of people probably have the idea that they are in tension so I would like to take a moment to talk about what being committed to peacebuilding means to me and why and how it strengthens my commitment to antifascism and queer liberation.

Let me say at the outset and unambiguously that my Anabaptist dedication to peacemaking demands an absolute commitment to non-lethality. I believe that all killing of persons is wrong specifically because I believe that killing a person can never be a way of living out love for that person. I do not, and will not, compromise on that point and I hope you will understand that everything else I have to say should be understood in that context. And that moral commitment does take certain actions “off the table” for me. It shapes the sort of antifascist and queer liberationist that I am.

But this essay isn’t about what sort of antifascist or queer liberationist I am, it is about what sort of Anabaptist I am, and it is about my peace ethic. I believe that Peace is a universal vocation, that, as followers of the Way of Jesus, we are called to be peacemakers. I also believe that, without justice, anything we might want to call “peace” is actually nothing but injustice. What I am afraid a lot of people (including a lot of my fellow Anabaptists) fail to understand, is that peace is not the same thing as an absence of conflict. When people are oppressed; when their rights are violated, when they are prevented from flourishing, they may not always resort to conflict; but the absence of conflict is not peace. Peace, the peace we are called to build as followers of Jesus, is a Peace that requires True Justice. And in speaking of Justice I am speaking of the state of affairs where (to quote Lady Julian) “all is well and all is well and all manner of things is well”. Justice is what is happening when oppression, cruelty, and want are no longer. And until we have Justice, any state of Peace that we might think we are experiencing will always be a false peace.

So then what is a false peace? I opened this essay with a quote from Jeremiah 6 where God is railing against people who say “peace peace” when there is no peace. As a matter of fact, these folks are shouting “peace peace” at a time when God is furious over injustice! As humans we can all experience the temptation to shout “peace” when we want an end to conflict. But conflict happens (among other things) because oppressed people aren’t willing to quietly and passively endure their oppression.

And that creates a situation that many of us (particularly Christians, most particularly straight white able bodied Christians) tend to find uncomfortable insofar as we find ourselves situated among those who are not experiencing the oppression or if we just aren’t experiencing the worst of it. I am sorry that I have to get a little bit political to make this clear (I did warn you that all three of my commitments inform one another) but I see no way around it. One of the less well understood powers of government is the ability to camouflage oppression. When the government writes an oppressive situation into law, that oppression starts to feel like “just the way things are” and when people work (legally or outside the law) to highlight and correct that oppression, they are labeled criminal by the government which causes us to see them as “the problem”, as the ones who violated the peace by initiating conflict. And peacemakers suffer from a strong temptation to blame instigators of visible conflict for a state of conflict. But that is not True seeing—it is a way of seeing things that only makes sense if the Government’s camouflaging of the initial oppression causes you to miss the oppression that people are reacting against.

If Christians respond to conflict out of a desire to end conflict first and only engage questions of Justice second, then we will end up trying to build peace by encouraging the oppressed to return to their oppression rather than by encouraging the oppressors to end their oppression. It is, and will always be, wrong to ask the oppressed to return to their oppression as a precursor to peacebuilding. The call of God to the church is rather to stand firmly on the side of the oppressed and to work towards Peace by tearing down all tyrants and systems with the temerity to oppress the Least of These.

Read the full article: https://billieiswriting.substack.com/p/when-they-cry-peace-peace

Recommended Reading: Foolishness and Faith in 1978's The Lord of the Rings

by Sarah Welch-Larson

In Ralph Bakshi’s animated adaptation, the hobbits are kindred spirits with the members of the early church.

The Lord of the Rings, director Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 animated adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy series, attempts to tell the story from the point of view of the hobbits.

Bakshi’s film has been generally forgotten in favor of Peter Jackson’s more successful live-action movie trilogy. It’s true, this version is unpolished and imperfect. The story is incomplete, leaving out the end of Tolkien’s saga. To fans of the books, this version feels like an unfulfilled promise. But its unfinished status belies its unique creative vision. Nowhere is that vision more apparent than in the movie’s presentation of the hobbits as innocents undergoing a mission that they are not equipped for and cannot hope to complete on their own. Impossible though it might seem, they must complete their mission anyway. In this, they are kindred spirits with the early church; like those first believers, these hobbits seem foolish for both their hope and their faithfulness.

Hobbits were the first beings to appear in Tolkien’s stories; of all the different beings that populate Middle-earth, they were likely his favorites. They’re the creatures most like him: homebodies and gardeners, lovers of good food and beer and things that grow. They don’t seek out adventure, but have it thrust upon them. Tolkien describes them frequently as “cheerful” and “foolish” and “silly.” They are literally lowly people, half the height of men and living in holes in the ground. By contrast, the villains of the story are often referred to as “crafty” or “cunning,” making calculations about how best to dominate the world. Hobbits don’t want power or glory. They are content to live in a quiet forgotten corner of Middle-earth, a strange, small, peaceful people in an increasingly dangerous world. This is remarkably similar to the early Christians, who were instructed by Paul to “live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.”

Bakshi’s version of the story demonstrates just how fond he is of hobbits as well. Where Tolkien describes them as “foolish,” Bakshi shows them to be so. The characters’ actions are expressive almost to a fault, each yawn and smile and step exaggerated to make the hobbits appear like innocents. When Frodo (voiced by Christopher Guard) agrees to take the One Ring out of the Shire, he does so almost nonchalantly, shoving his hands into his pockets and kicking a rock down the path ahead of him. Sam (Michael Scholes) dances in place when he realizes he is going to see elves, then bursts into tears—a childlike action. He and his friends do not understand the full consequences of their choice to do the right thing; they just know that they are about to go on a big adventure. They move through a wild world that does not value them, but the movie does. And it works hard to make sure the viewer does too.

Frodo is a reluctant adventurer who accepts his charge to take the One Ring to Mordor without fully understanding the dangers he will face on his journey. He is a nobody, an echo of the early church members, who were neither powerful nor influential. The animation styles emphasize Frodo’s place in the world: delicate watercolors for his home in the Shire; heavier oil effects for the kingdoms of the elves; and pen-and-ink drawings for the dangers of the wilds, with trees and rocks dripping with dark lines, as well as menace. The hobbits look weak in comparison.

Read the full article: https://thinkchristian.net/foolishness-and-faith-in-1978s-the-lord-of-the-rings

Recommended Reading: Spiritual Formation in 1977's The Hobbit

by Abby Olcese

The Rankin/Bass animated adaptation offers an unexpected journey of discipleship.

The 1977 Rankin/Bass adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit has never enjoyed a consistent reputation. Today, some elements of the animation hold up wonderfully, such as the genuinely frightening goblins and lamp-eyed Gollum. Other parts—the rudimentary character movement and cheesy original songs—feel more than a little creaky. At roughly 80 minutes, the film also essentially makes a simplified book report out of Tolkien’s original story, something Peter Jackson’s later, live-action trilogy more than compensated for.

The Hobbit’s compression of its source material, however, may actually be a hidden strength. Originally made for television, the Rankin-Bass version sticks to main plot points, while its episodic storytelling contains clear lessons for the character of Bilbo Baggins (voiced by Orson Bean). The end result is a moral arc that highlights the story’s formational aspects. In this incarnation, The Hobbit moves beyond an epic adventure tale to become a parable of discipleship.

The opening of The Hobbit—with Bilbo briefly introduced before the wizard Gandalf (John Huston) shows up to recruit him for a mission, bringing along a posse of dwarves—mirrors Tolkien’s book in its sudden pacing. Gandalf appears out of nowhere, immediately asserting that Bilbo is the right fit to help the displaced dwarves reclaim their kingdom from the dragon Smaug. With his short stature, big eyes, and reluctant voice, Bilbo seems an unlikely candidate. He’s ready to take on the job, however, despite knowing nothing about it. Within moments, he’s hosting Gandalf and the dwarves in his home and then packing up to join them on their quest.

Gandalf’s surprising choice of hero turns out to have incredible consequences—not only for Bilbo, but for Middle-earth itself. Important figures with humble beginnings are also an important part of the biblical tradition. In the Old Testament, God guides Moses, the child of slaves, to lead his people to freedom. He chooses David, a young shepherd, to defeat Goliath and become Israel’s greatest ruler. The tradition continues in the New Testament. Jesus’ disciples don’t come from venerated lines of great priests. They’re mostly fishermen. In fact, Christ’s calling of his closest followers bears striking similarities to the way Gandalf first appears at Bilbo’s home. In Matthew 4, he calls Peter and Andrew while they’re fishing, telling them simply to “Come, follow me . . . and I will send you out to fish for people.” He later calls James and John the same way.

Read the full article: https://thinkchristian.net/spiritual-formation-in-the-hobbit

Woke Christianity? You betcha!

Recommended Reading: C.S. Lewis and the Sex/Gender Distinction

by Billie Hoard

A Paper Presented at the 2024 Undiscovered C.S. Lewis Conference

Beyond Perelandra, in 1948 when Lewis first published Priestesses in the Church?17 which ends with Lewis contrasting the roles of men and women within the church to their roles in society, he concluded “With the Church, we are farther in18: for there we are dealing with male and female not merely as facts of nature but as the live and awful shadows of realities utterly beyond our control and largely beyond our direct knowledge. Or rather, we are not dealing with them but (as we shall soon learn if we meddle) they are dealing with us. [emphasis mine]”19. And of course this was written only three years after Lewis had published That Hideous Strength which, if anything, supports and expands this concept of gender as more fundamental, more real, than sex—the thing towards which sex points.As Mary Steward Van Leeuwen puts it: 

“The younger Lewis, … argued on behalf of including gender forms, or archetypes, to which women and men were called to conform themselves. ‘Suppose,’ Jane Studdock in That Hideous Strength wondered, just after her conversion,  “Suppose one were a thing after all … designed by Someone Else and valued for qualities quite different from what one had regarded as one’s true self?”20.

Neither does Lewis’s approach to sex and gender here seem to have been even a notable departure from the thought of his peers. In The Silmarillion Tolkien comments that

[T]he Valar may walk, if they will, unclad, and then even the Eldar cannot clearly perceive them, though they be present. But when they desire to clothe themselves the Valar take upon them forms some as of male and some as of female; for that difference of temper they had even from their beginning, and it is but bodied forth in the choice of each, not made by the choice, even as with us male and female may be shown by the raiment but is not made thereby."

Here again, we see the idea of gender as a quality of spirit/soul which determines the Valar’s sex when they elect to take a body. Meanwhile Charles Williams’s whole concept of approaching God through the ways of negation and affirmation of images (corresponding roughly to apophatic and cataphatic theology)21 certainly points in a similar direction, being grounded in the idea that we can (imperfectly) use the physical world to gain some degree of understanding about the spiritual, by which it is caused. And of course Barfield’s “Great War” with Lewis over the role of imagination as a mode of divining Truth22 situates Barfield as inclined to place more weight than Lewis on the legitimacy of gender as the unifying meaning of physical/biological sex. As he (arguing for the capacity of poetry to unveil Truth) argues in Poetic Diction 

“Mythology is the ghost of concrete meaning. Connections between discrete phenomena, connections which are now apprehended as metaphor, were once only perceived as immediate realities. As such the poet strives, by his own efforts, to see them, and to make others see them, again.”23

Finally, beginning at least as early as 1944 we have manifold evidence that Lewis held to what has been described (and not infrequently criticized) as an overly platonic or sometimes (mis)characterized as a “Cartesian dualist”24 view of reality, and that this platonist influence which understands the physical to be an outflowing of the spiritual, formed a critical part of his overall theology and metaphysics25 writing in the original version of the essay Transposition that:

“Our problem was that in what claims to be our spiritual life all the elements of our natural life recur: and, what is worse, it looks at first glance as if no other elements were present. We now see that if the spiritual is richer than the natural (as no one who believes in its existence would deny) then this is exactly what we should expect.”26

Read the full article: https://billieiswriting.substack.com/p/cs-lewis-and-the-sexgender-distinction

Public School for the Public, Not Your Personal Religious Teaching

As a person of faith myself, I agree with the idea of this. 

Public school is not the voice of the church, any church, nor should it be. If you want a religious education, send your kids to a religiously affiliated school. The public school is not the place to teach any religion other than ALL of them as they relate to history and literature in a third-person sort of way, not as a school practice. School is never a place to encourage, or promote religious practice, whether Christian, Islam, Hindu, Buddhism, Satanism, etc. 

Teach academics and life skills. 

Save the religious practice for home and church. 

And let's put our prayers in our prayer closets in private, not in public (as the Pharisees do). And schools already reserve a period of silence during which students may pray as they please, if they please.

Interpretation, not Infallible Truth

 This is what I try to explain to fellow believers. No denomination holds the corner on what's the "accurate" interpretation. There are too many years and too many individuals to not take other interpretations into account. This is why making laws based on any Bible doctrines can become dangerous. 

(And that's ignoring the fact that no religion is supposed to impact our laws more than any other according to the founding documents.)

Poetry Corner: I Am

 

In the hallway today I passed students,
Some afraid, others emboldened,
Once sung precious—In whose sight?—
All distracting themselves with trivialities.
“Did you hear about…?”
“Are you going to…?”
“Do we have practice…?
It kept them from noticing the dreams
Of existence, of acceptance,
Of being a part of the Grand Experiment,
Kicked along the dirty floors
As they scurried to class.

Driving to work today I watched the woman
Standing in the rain,
Holding the sign,
“Out of Work Please Help,” shivering, shimmering.
Mother, sister, daughter, aunt—perhaps
Saint, sinner, harlot, sacrifice,
Prophet, poet, priest, king—
Bosses watch clocks, and we can’t hesitate,
Not in the rain, nor in heavy traffic,
It’s easy to forget after all
When there’s a man with a sign
Two blocks closer to the office.

In my newsfeed today, opinion hurled like daggers,
“Not a woman”
“Biological male”
“Sports and bathrooms”
Rainbows and flags posted support
Allies brought hammers and words to build
A place to be secure, to exist,
To know who she is, was, will be, amen.
But the damage was done,
Hateful words have barbs
And even to pry them out
Leaves scars and bleeding.

I am not them.
But I am them.
I am he, she, they, all the pronouns.
They are always in me.
The him, the her, the them,
Flow like oxygen through my lungs,
Expressed outward in his, hers, theirs,
Collectively exhaled from my open mouth
To the ground below,
Picked up by some, ignored by others,
On the way to class, driving to work,
In the anonymity of virtual life.

I am that I am, one said.
Know that I am, said another.
I am too, I proclaimed.
To be one,
To be one another,
To be.

Sean Taylor © 2024

Visit my poetry.com site.

Poetry Corner: Punk Rock

 

They busted the windows on Wall Street today
Trash cans filled with garbage and old food made the first crack
And sent all the happy people in nice suits scurrying
For once thinking about something other than the numbers
That make them better at ignoring the rest of us.
They stepped over the banana peels and potato chip bags
The crushed soda cans that should have been recycled instead 
On their way to the exits, the only light they were
Suddenly focused on—But that kind of thing isn’t really my style. 

They’ll gather up a million men and women tomorrow
And put them in matching T-shirts that say “Not Going Back”
With rapidly practiced chants, call-backs to great leaders
Of yesterdays gone by, times we thought we had moved beyond
Times we assumed we had put behind us. I can join them
Of course I can. It’s the least—the very least, if I’m honest—
I can do, right behind merely sending money on my phone
While I stream Agatha All Along on Disney Plus. But
It still doesn’t quite feel like the thing I was created to do at this time.

They dyed their mohawks in rainbows and shoved the middle finger
Into the air while their fans screamed and moshed and bled
Showing camaraderie, empathy, solidarity the only way
They understood fully, with anger, with energy, with activity. 
And it felt amazing to jump, and yell,  and raise my fist, and shout obscenities 
At the powers, and yet… Even when they kissed—tongues and leather 
And lace and fingers and hair—Man on man, woman on woman, 
Man on woman, trans on trans, Trans on straight
Straight on till sunrise… It still was not enough. 

Yesterday I am a writer. Tomorrow I paint in words. Today
I have words or many colors, many spectrums that correspond 
To those that swirl in the sky, dance in the puddles, blur through smoke
“Vandalize” city walls with slogans: Trans rights are human rights.
Abortion is healthcare. Gay and proud. Black lives matter.
I have all these, and my keyboard has been selfish, complacent,
Too satisfied in my place of safety. But no more. 
I cannot break windows. My knees may give out on a march. 
My money can only go so far. My shouting can be drowned out by other music. 

But I can write. And by God, I will. We are not going back. 

(c) 2024 Sean Taylor

Visit my Poetry.com site.

Poetry Corner: When We Had No Flag

 

by Sean Taylor

When we had no flag 

There were only white sheets, hanging on clotheslines 

Flapping on windy days, 

Waving greetings like so many neighbors on so many dusty paths

White not for surrender 

But for sleeping, for rest because white was easy 

Easy to bleach our odors away, 

Dirt and sweat from one person's work, one man's labor, one woman's toil

One day we  painted bars deep red

Crimson with the blood of the people who lived here first 

But there wasn't enough

So we added more from the backs of the people we owned

And so we painted what was left blue

Blue with the bruises of our slaves and red with their stripes 

Even if we had to wrench the paint out of the whips after use, 

Twisting leather until our fingers too were as calloused as theirs

We found some white remained

But it was not for sleeping, not anymore; it was for the Virgin Innocent

Our children who would inherit a world 

Built on the paint dripped from the wounds of those we had  conquered

Perhaps it's time again

Wash day for the flag, with fresh bleach to clean away the red and blue

To allow the colors to surrender and fade

And once more flap greetings in the wind

Perhaps you, or me, 

or that woman over there, the one in all the colors of the rainbow

Or that vermin, that enemy, that animal,

Could be the bleach to get the job started

To speak the change we all should hear

Whistling in the wind

That blew when we had no flag

(c) 2024

Visit my poetry.com site.

RIP Tony Campolo

I remember back in my fundamentalist days thinking Tony was a sort of benign cancer in the faith. Now I find myself trying to be more like him.

https://religionnews.com/2024/11/19/tony-campolo-sociologist-and-famed-red-letter-christian-has-died/

Let America Be America Again -- Langston Hughes

Editor's Note: This is the poem I think of and hear in my head every time I hear the words "Make America Great Again" or see one of those red caps. 

=====================================

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That’s made America the land it has become.

O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home—

For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,

And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came

To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?

Surely not me? The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we’ve dreamed

And all the songs we’ve sung

And all the hopes we’ve held

And all the flags we’ve hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay—

Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

And yet must be—the land where every man is free.

The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath—

America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain—

All, all the stretch of these great green states—

And make America again! 

From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright © 1994 the Estate of Langston Hughes. Used with permission.