Here’s a poem for today. I wrote this for a woman I met last year and tried to help who was stuck in the endless limbo and uncertainty of the asylum system. I don’t know where she is now, her situation was very precarious and communication with her never easy. But I hope she’s okay. And let me be clear on one thing: Borders kill people and destroy families and lives. Tear them all down, set their bureaucracies on fire. Every checkpoint and every guard is an affront to life itself.
My music recommendation for today is Fuck the Border from the album Today’s Empires, Tomorrow’s Ashes by Propagandhi.
Dreams from the Beds of Deportation Facilities
For Heather, wherever she is now.
We’ll all make it out one day.
We’ll make it out and we’ll dance ecstatic
On the sharp points of their border fences
Balancing acts just so on all these lines.
We’ll dance on the perimeter until their courthouses
Turn to ash and all medical records scatter
Into the air like migratory birds.
No one flew over
the cuckoo’s nest.
And they’ll stand there looking on
In lab coats
And powdered wigs. Ridiculous airs of theater.
Whereas we never played a role. We simply played
And never stopped moving.