Global Disability Anthem from capri0mni

[jesse_the_k]

capri0mni is an expert monster wrangler. Her poems explore the monstrous as warning, as pastime, and as creatures to embrace.

From her book of poetry: Monsters Rhapsody: Disability, Culture, & Identity by Ann Magill http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/Ann_Magill

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Anthem (for the People of No Nation)

“All borders are invisible from space.”
This is our prayer for peace,
Our song of hope,
The story that we tell ourselves,
Trying, with the telling,
To make it so.

Except from space, we see the blazing lights
Tracing out lines of power:
In the capital cities, coiled knots,
Across the deserts, pulled tight and thin.
And all of them bright enough
To hide the stars.

And then there are the borders in the mind
(of which we do not sing):
The boundaries that separate
Those whose mortal weakness
We shall forgive
From those whose weaknesses
Are shamed.

We who dwell behind those lines
Are one in seven.
One in twenty grow up here;
Others immigrate by accident,
Many drift in with advancing age.
We are one billion ‛poor, unfortunate, few.’
We have no flag to rally under,
Nor to drape the coffins of our dead.
And even if we had,
What should mark the canton,
And what the fly?

We are as different from each other
As we are from those
Who draw the lines.
Yet when we meet,
Sometimes, we recognize:
We share a common struggle.
We dread a common fate.
And we can even feel
A common pride.

The history I tell is mine.
The landscape I describe,
Its beauty, and its trash,
Is only what I, myself, have seen.
But this is my anthem
For the people of No Nation
(Who dwell in all nations).
This is my prayer for peace,
The story that I tell,
Hoping, with the telling,
To make it so.
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