broken walls and narratives
A not so revolutionary blog about feminism, socialism, activism, travel, nature, life, etc.
Archive for the category “poetry”
Rosetta Stone
Rosetta Stone
H. Bradford
12/6/22
People on the internet are fighting over the Rosetta Stone.
Everyone on the thread said it belongs in Britain.
Finders keepers
Egyptians would lose it
Muslims can’t be trusted
The French found it first
Those Egyptians aren’t REAL Egyptians.
We owe so much to Western academics.
****
When I wish upon a shooting star,
Sometimes I wish it was a giant rock,
A Rosetta stone that spells cataclysm
To Islamophobes, Imperialists, and ignorance
But asteroids aren’t as precise as drones and missiles.
****
If there were such a stone,
It would certainly be written in English
And in blood
So the language is easy to understand for colonists and apologists.
****
It’s dark to think about.
Maybe this isn’t everyone,
Quiet, kind people don’t post online.
And when has justice ever come from the heavens?
If history is long enough,
Will wrongs be made right?
Because the oppressed are many
*****
And eventually they fight
Feral Brain
Feral Brain
a poem by H. Bradford
Everything feels foreign.
A house full of strange objects.
A body shaped by strange rules.
People are rituals.
That one’s a party,
but where’s the surprise?
Meaning is the meat of domestication,
It softens the teeth
and shortens the jaw.
The world is roads
and prisons
and wars.
But there must be some wilderness left in the frontier of
our genes.
A germ or a seed.
Some small part that wasn’t commodified,
colonized,
or atomized.
There is still some flight and fight
in the feral brain.
For now,
we only howl
at the absurdity of it all.
Survival isn’t Pretty
H. Bradford
08/06/21
Survival isn’t pretty.
There have been dark days before.
Global fires, sunless days, and acid rain.
Those times aren’t for the large, proud, upright creatures.
If you have feathers, fly away.
Hide under that hard, terrapin shell.
Slip into the mud or sea.
Enter a long, slow sleep.
Learn to eat carrion.
Take life from death.
If you have big teeth, now is the time to use them.
If you don’t, grow small, and slip into the shadowy crevices.
Parasites and scavengers have a chance,
But not plants with hungry leaves
and flowers with special needs.
Everything maladaptive is adapted to a time and place.
Time is kinder to snails, sharks, and tardigrades
Than it is to smart, sad monkeys.
Cataclysm settles the score,
A sudden change subtracts what is too precious for the world.
Too precarious in chain of being.
Survival isn’t pretty.
Pretty isn’t made to survive.
Nothing to Mourn
Nothing to Mourn
H. Bradford
09/19/20
A Black Hole
A Black Hole
H. Bradford
A lost friend is like a black hole,
But maybe they were a black hole to begin with.
There was always a darkness there,
Even when there was the life and light of friendship,
There was a gravity of past crimes and an event horizon where no one really grew or changed.
Frozen, just at the edge of the chasm.
Pulling away is hard, there must be some goodness in the all consuming darkness.
And what is the space around us, but the endless expanse of black?
Objects that stay lose their integrity,
until they become black holes themselves.
There is still memory in the space between us.
Stars die, but old habits die harder.
Time is space and space is time,
The universe may reinvent itself in endless incarnations,
But mistakes repeat themselves,
when everything stays in orbit.
So, I am drifting away now.
I’ve been drifting away for some time
I found my escape velocity
When they shined a light on you.
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