No rules to follow, no laws to break—we woke!

//No rules to follow, no laws to break—we woke!

No rules to follow, no laws to break—we woke!

By Zigi Lowenberg

 

’scuse me
’scuse me, don’t know the rules here
but I butt in
across the room, I know
we were once from the same tribe
ancient threads pulling me towards you
float along the oceans that
fool the eye with their expanse

we are salt
we are sand
we are water

no rules to follow, no laws to break
for we have seen this before
raids and pogroms, a border a Wall
my refugee heart
treads across steppes bearing petrified trunks
rails clanging against Kindertransport of another kind,
cold-sweat defying dreams
throwing ICE on the rocks—

no rules to follow, no laws to break
for now we woke and won’t let go, we are the embrace
and to you, your generations I’m tethered
somos unidos
ale eyn mentshn

we are salt
we are sand
we are water,
we are one.

 


Zigi Lowenberg, performance poet and co-leader of the jazzpoetry ensemble UpSurge!, has appeared at music festivals, rallies, clubs, bookstores and universities from NYC to New Orleans to San Francisco. Zigi’s acting credits include The Lysistrata Project, the Stein-Toklas Project, and John Browns Truth. Zigi is a member of the National Writers Union and Radical Poets Collective. Her poetry has appeared in the poetry journal rabbit and rose. Her essay, “Support the Edge!” will be published in a book Creative Lives (spring 2017). Zigi and her husband, Raymond Nat Turner, are executive producers on UpSurge!’s two independent CD recordings, which have garnered critical acclaim. They live in Harlem and Oakland.

Also by Zigi Lowenberg: “Protest Poem in Two Acts.”

Photo credit: Lefteris Heretakis via a Creative Commons license.

By | 2017-07-10T16:38:44-07:00 July 13th, 2017|Categories: Issue 33: 13 July 2017|Tags: , |1 Comment

One Comment

  1. Don Turner 2017-07-20 at 2:11 am

    Excellent! I love your work!

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