We Shall Be Dangerous

I.
The ones who own the stories
rule the world;
we shall become dangerous,
so very dangerous
in the taking back
of the world’s greatest stories-
we shall imagine all lands
through the eyes of the sun.
Our sunrise, like the recovery
of endangered species,
exists for small moments
in the measured heartbeats
that mark the end
of their own dissolution.

II.
We shall be dangerous.
We shall never wait for permission
to do what we see
needs our hands and voices;
we shall
be demanding in cultures
that demand passivity;
we shall carry the pickaxe
to the rocky fields others
simply pray will bear fruit-
we shall carry books
written by poets to meetings
led by dictators. We shall
love the world more
than you hate each other
and us. We will bring
new stories to old and worn out
livelihoods.

III.
We shall make ourselves dangerous,
for we will confront the beasts
that hunt our souls, and kill
the fear they feast upon;
we shall tell the Truth, not
your truth or my truth
or His truth but The Truth
about what was done to us,
how what was done unto others
was also done unto
the living parts
of the world;
we shall always read
more than one book
before we die, and will raise
our children
in the presence of
all the books.

IV.
We shall speak dangerously,
we shall clean the prejudices
that block the light
from getting in;
we shall let all women
own both their bodies
and their futures.
We shall teach the genius children;
those same children
that upper class autocrats
do not think
deserve the same education
as the lazy nephews of autocrats.
We shall build grit
into all lands long taught
to fear its thinkers;
and teach all children
to be thinkers that fight.
The new militia will not
wear uniforms
or terrorize innocent people.

V.
We shall love dangerously;
we shall wear flowers in our hair
and carry the secrets of
ancient starlight and magical words
in our eyes; we shall love
everything the haters hate,
we shall list all of those things
and write them into great books
that bind outcasts like us
all over the world, to the world.
We shall let our lovers
be weak with us,
we shall love with the
same tenderness the cup uses
to hold our tea; the same fierceness
the sun uses to scorch his deserts;
loving everyone and everything
how and when and where we want;
all the things that people
in too many churches
tell us are unlovable. We shall
allow desire, real, living desire
to play us like so many oboes
in so many orchestras.

VI.
We shall be dangerous.
We shall live lives
that make the land beneath our feet
remember us fondly; we shall
be the opposite of saints, for
we shall love the poor and despise poverty.
We shall walk naked down all the streets
of all the people
who want us invisible; we shall
make their spouses look upon
us and ponder their boring
lives in sanctioned beds.

VII.
We shall teach dangerously.
We shall be the poets
who prepare you
for both your deadliest love
and your most impactful war;
our presence at tables
will liberate all the silences
of all the worlds;
we shall invite our loneliness
out on dates
and occupy too much time and space
when we eat alone at restaurants
in the company
of a dangerous notebook
and a poet’s sword.

VIII.
We shall reclaim
the most dangerous stories
as our own;
we shall be the speakers
of full truths and gray morals;
we shall be the people
whom orators
of partial truths
and black and white lives,
toss into the rivers to drown-
lest their children turn curious faces
in our direction
instead of theirs- we shall
be the emerging writers
of new narratives
and we shall be labeled
dangerous while we save
children, animals, sinners,
and ourselves.

Author's Note

artwork is my own.
this is the English translation of a poem writen in Spanish