Tagged: performance poetry

‘Numbers’ written in support of Extinction Rebellion, November 2018.
THIS.
At last.
A younger, more energetic, less ‘responsible-for-others’ me is jumping in my taxi, painting banners, writing songs, sewing up crazy costumes, meeting around fires, dancing, playing music and gathering, gathering….preparing to ACT….
Now I find myself writing alone as November’s winds howl around our hill top home…..in support of POSITIVE ACTION, REBELLION and CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE….
Something, not nothing….. 🙂 Buzzing with HOPE again.
(spoken word)
Numbers.
There is real power in numbers.
Yet they all just turn away.
Those in power are not listening
To a single word we say.
I think they were born not listening.
They’ve grown deaf and blind and numb, numb…..numb.
They smirk and say “Well what have YOU done?”
Turning my own painful impotence,
in the face of their massive ignorance,
against me,
again.
Instead of simply saying
YES!
We must.
We will.
So much wasted energy in power that stands still.
Not alive.
Not FOR LIFE.
They do not listen.
Robotic insistence on their own incestuous wisdom.
Artificially attempting to stall Time itself for their selfish advantage.
Fracturing momentarily, in the rippling waves of light, we get glimpses of
Their true, mechanical, workings.
Puppets to their antiquated systems.
Oiled by crude extraction and war, they walk, blindfold,
Around the elephants, clearly, crowding their halls,
Naked for children to gaze upon.
Confused.
Totallydistracted by their own reality
We sit and watch them, watching themselves.
I also know what it is like to be numb.
Just another performing statistic.
I also stopped listening.
Exhausted from being unheard.
No more of this insanity.
There is real strength in numbers.
And still they turn away
The only numbers left that matter
Are the ones that kneel and pray.
The ones that call for system change,
That make a difference everyday.
That turn out,
stand up
speak out loud
Together stronger as a crowd.
The ones that give the Earth a voice…
It’s all become
one
stark
unprecedented
choice.
Kat Robertson November 2018