PAUL db WATKINS

December 24, 2013October 6, 2014 pauldbwatkins Christmas

A Christmas Sermon on Peace

In November and December in 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered five lectures for the renowned Massey Lecture Series on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), released initially as Conscience of Change, and then as The Trumpet of Conscience. His polemical, “A Christmas Sermon on Peace” was first delivered at Ebenezer Baptists Church where he served as a co-pastor. On Christmas Eve, in 1967, the CBC aired his sermon as part of its 7^th annual Massey Lecture.

It made sense that Martin Luther King, Jr. reached out to other, often international, audiences given the growing scope of his message for world peace through the mobilization of united people around the world. Further, King thought highly of Canada, praising the country for its role as a haven (Canaan land) for the escaped slave: “So standing today in Canada I am linked with the history of my people and its unity with your past” (Trumpet 3). Moreover, while King, Jr. is often remembered for his approaches to civil liberty through nonviolence, the Massey Lectures display how his approach towards justice became more radical and layered, avowing civil disobedience: “Massive civil disobedience is a strategy for social change” (Trumpet 55).

Some attribute King, Jr.’s assassination on April 4, 1968, to his outspoken stance against the American government as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” (24), stating that the “war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit” (32). In his “A Christmas Sermon on Peace” he articulates his vision of peace as antiwar, criticizing then President Johnson for his hypocritical stance towards achieving peace:

Every time we drop our bombs in North Vietnam, President Johnson talks eloquently about peace. What is the problem? They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek, but one day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. All of this is saying that, in the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends. (73)

As the above passage shows, King’s “Christmas Sermon” is more global in vision than his powerful 1963 “I Have a Dream Speech.” Many applaud the King who was opposed to violence, but then ignore the King who called for massive nonviolent demonstrations to end war and poverty in America and throughout the world. As he says in “Christmas Sermon”: “I tried to talk to the nation about a dream that I had had, and I must confess to you today that not long after talking about that dream I started seeing it turn into a nightmare” (78). That nightmare came just a few weeks after King’s speech when four innocent black girls were murdered in a church in Birmingham, Alabama.

Once the Civil Rights Act was signed in 1964, of which King was present and instrumental in bringing about, he noticed that while much had changed in America, the larger racist and globally oppressive systems of injustice remained intact. Hence, in “Christmas Sermon” his ideological compass was much more international, as he described how more “than half a million sleep on the sidewalks of Calcutta every night,” declaring: “No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone, and as long as we try, the more we are going to have war in this world” (70). King’s new message, which still related to his hope for fraternity between humankind and God, was ecologically and theologically based on the notion that all life is related. In the same speech he said: “all life is interrelated. We are all caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly” (71). Given the global economy we now live in, and depend upon, King hit the nail on the head with the lightning of prophecy.

He optimistically argued that solving these ever growing problems was perfectly achievable, since the wealth of the United States alone makes the elimination of poverty perfectly practicable. His overall message always remained the same, which was that love overcomes all. He didn’t mean love merely in the romantic or friendship sense, but in the Greek language usage of the word, Agápē, which basically translates as “unconditional love.” He describes Agápē as “understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill towards all men. Agapē is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return” (75). For King, this love was tied to the love of God operating in the human heart.

And how hard is it to love our enemies, or those who disagree with our viewpoints? King’s message was built on the teachings of Jesus who didn’t say, “like you enemies,” which King distinguishes as an imperative difference, “because there are some people that I find it pretty difficult to like. Liking is an affectionate emotion, and I can’t like anybody who would bomb my home. I can’t like anybody who would exploit me […] We must work passionately and unrelentingly for first-class citizenship” (76). Like Gandhi, King was someone able to match others capacity to inflict suffering by his capacity to endure it and love them in return. Even though King became “personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes” (79), he chose to go on loving.

King’s “A Christmas Sermon on Peace” remains as powerful as when it was delivered 46 years ago today. He argued that in Christ there is neither male nor female, communist or capitalist, but human beings as one in the love of God. I am no longer a practicing Catholic, but I find his message of acceptance and the will to help those who have less than us an overwhelmingly powerful one, especially during the time of year when many of us reflect on how much we have compared to those who have so little. Imagine if we thought this way throughout the year?

There are those who try to label King as non-subversive, but Malcolm X and King are really two necessary sides of the same coin. Many Christians fail to remember that Jesus was a radical in his time, a man who hung around lepers and prostitutes, was anti-public prayer (Matthew 6:5), was anti-wealth, and who never once mentioned abortion or birth control, and who was not white. Too often people judge others based on the colour of their skin, their sexual preference, religious or non-religious beliefs, rather than choosing to love them unconditionally.

King’s love was unconditional enough that he was willing to die for it. In Canada, King’s notions of what he termed The Just Society greatly inspired Pierre Elliott Trudeau who was the only candidate to mention Martin Luther King, Jr. King and Trudeau’s notions of The Just Society present an opportunity to negotiate disorder and fragmentation by embracing difference and trying to come together as a holistic group. There are only people and the hope, to quote the late and great Martin Luther King Jr., “that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!” (“Mountaintop”), whatever that land might represent for us now, and the hope of a still more free future. Every year my wife and I listen to King’s “A Christmas Sermon on Peace.” Its message of goodwill and peace on earth through “cosmic companionship” (78) is a vital trumpeting amid the hurly-burly atmosphere of the holiday season. Agápē.

You can view the full transcript here.

Audio is available, from here.

Works Cited

King, Martin Luther, Jr. “A Christmas Sermon on Peace.” The Trumpet of Conscience. Boston: Beacon Press, 2010. 67-80. Print.
—. “I Have a Dream.” 28 Aug. 1963. American Rhetoric. Web
—. “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.” 3 April. 1968. American Rhetoric. Web.

Feature image is of Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking against the Vietnam War, St. Paul Campus, University of Minnesota, from Minnesota Historical Society.

December 17, 2013January 10, 2014 pauldbwatkins memoriam

Mandela, Rest in Power

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
-Nelson Mandela

On December 5^th, 2013, the world lost one of its most principled heroes in the struggle against oppression. Nelson Mandela (18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African politician, anti-apartheid revolutionary, and among many other things, a philanthropist who served as South Africa’s first fully representational and democratically elected President from 1994 to 1999. Mandela’s government focused on dealing with institutionalized racism, inequality of all strands, and fostered an environment where racial reconciliation was possible. Truly, this was affirmative and improvisational territory born out of Mandela’s love for justice. Politically an African Nationalist and a democratic socialist, Mandela spent 27 years in prison for his unrelenting and activist position towards the abolition of apartheid. In 1993 he won the Nobel Peace Prize. He is held in profound esteem around the world, and in South Africa he is often referred to as Tata (“Father”): “the father of the nation.”

Predictably, Canadian media coverage of Mandela’s death has been rather untrusthworthy, as it is important to remember that Mandela, while a man of peace, also commenced a three-decade-long armed struggle after non-violent avenues had been shut down. Further, while many people living in Canada did resist apartheid, the Canadian government only opposed the racist system rather late in the game. The fact remains, as Cecil Foster argues, that the apartheid model in South Africa was largely based on Canada’s successful colonization of First Nations people with the Canadian constitution providing a model to control the undesirables (Race 41; 95).

Mandela importantly remains a force who taught the world about the power of resistance, redress, and reconciliation.

Have a listen to South African jazz artist, Abdullah Ibrahim’s moving composition, Mandela (1985):

Also, check out this very touching Mandela tribute, which came from a rather unexpected place:

Works Cited

Foster, Cecil. Where Race Does Not Matter: The New Spirit of Modernity. Toronto: Penguin, 2005. Print.

December 17, 2013January 12, 2014 pauldbwatkins Call for Papers, improvisation, Music

Call for Papers: “Cyphers: Hip Hop and Improvisation”

I am guest-editing a special collection of essays on Hip Hop and Improvisation. The Call for Papers is below.

Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation invites submissions for a special issue with the theme “Cyphers: Hip Hop and Improvisation,” guest-edited by Rebecca Caines and Paul Watkins. This special issue of CSI will draw together artists and academics to investigate the crucial role improvisation plays in the international field of Hip Hop, and in the related field of critical Hip Hop studies. We seek contributions from artist/practitioners and from scholars working across the disciplines.

Derek Bailey’s notion of improvisation as being the most practiced, yet the least understood, of all musical activities, is particularly pertinent to the immense and constantly burgeoning field of Hip Hop praxis from around the world. Although most scholars are aware of the integral nature of improvisatory practices in Hip Hop, few critically explore how improvisation is a viable form of analysis in Hip Hop, as well as a model for social change. Improvisation plays a central role in African-American, Hispanic, and Caribbean based Hip Hop practices in the US, and continues to be a core element in Hip Hop music, dance, and visual art across the globalized forms of this interdisciplinary art practice. We encourage contributors to pursue new conversations, interventions even, about how we think of improvisation vis-à-vis the larger milieu of Hip Hop. Critical academic essays are encouraged, and the editors also welcome for consideration artist statements, commentaries, reviews, interviews and experimental textual forms. We intend to showcase a variety of live artist performances and invited papers at a launch event for this Special Issue. CSI/ÉCI encourages the submission of audio and visual content to accompany texts. It is the responsibility of the author to ascertain copyright and gain permissions.

Potential topics include:

• How do Hip Hop artists combine idiomatic and non-idiomatic improvisation in their work?

• What artistic, social, and economic pressures face Hip Hop artists who foreground the improvisatory in their work?

• How does improvisation in Hip Hop reflect, develop, or contrast the social practices and pressing political issues of the communities in which it appears?

• What role does improvisation play in the creation of academic disciplinarities and “Hip Hop pedagogies” both inside and outside educational institutions? How might the ubiquity of improvised DJ performances inform knowledge formation, and provide critical tools for pedagogues?

• How does scholarship in Hip Hop studies respond to the improvisatory nature of the practice?

• What role does improvisation in Hip Hop play in the recontextualization of cultural and intercultural identity?

• How do Indigenous communities across the world improvise, translate, transform, and indigenize the US form of Hip Hop arts practice?

• Since Hip Hop has often traditionally been described as “noise” by many conservatives and academics who uncritically profile Hip Hop artists and fans of all genders, races, and classes, might dissonance compel us to think about how disruption can function as a model for critical practice?

• How are the five primary elements of Hip Hop—dance (notably breaking), urban inspired art (markedly graffiti), deejaying (turntablism), beatboxing and emceeing (rapping)—negotiated under improvisatory practices and amalgamations?

• In what ways are orality and textuality (what we might think of as recording) tied to Hip Hop and how might either form limit or broaden the art?

• Houston A. Baker Jr. argues, poetry, like rap, is intended to be a “disruptive performance […] as an audible or sounding space of opposition” (Rap 96). In what ways are Hip Hop and poetry related?

• What are the relationships between technology, accessibility, and Hip Hop culture?

• How do DJs improvisationally rework archival material that is often dormant, thus creating new repertoires from the past?

• While misogyny is bigger than Hip Hop, we welcome papers that explore how gender is improvised and performed in Hip Hop.

Submissions should be 4000-6000 words (shorter essays may also be considered at the discretion of the editors). Please submit completed essays to the journal website by April 16, 2014. Information on the submission process and examples of previously published work can be found at www.criticalimprov.com. Inquires can also be directly made to csi-eci@uoguelph.ca. Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisation is an open-access, peer-reviewed, electronic, academic journal on improvisation, community, and social practice housed at the University of Guelph.

Cypher photo by AFP from here.

December 14, 2013December 14, 2013 pauldbwatkins Event, improvisation, Music

Improvisation as an Act of Faith

On December 6th, Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice (ICASP) presented a symposium (“Spirit(s) Improvise”) on improvisation and spirituality. “Spirit(s) Improvise” brought together distinguished scholars, musicians, and spiritual practitioners to explore the relationship between improvisation and spirituality. One of the primary questions asked was how can improvisation and spirituality, broadly defined as frameworks through which people imagine and enact alternative ways of being in the world, contribute to our understandings of imagination and creativity, community and space, and transcendence and hope?

Held at and co-sponsored by the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, the well-attended event sparked animated conversations and debates about the relationship between improvisation and spirituality from a variety of perspectives: musical, political, social, and theological.

For speaker bios and abstracts, click here.

Below are some photos from the event.

Gerard Yun (Music, University of Waterloo) and Luke Burton (Wilfrid Laurier Unviersity) “Beyond Traditions: Yogic Chant and Shakuhachi in Contemporary Improvisation.”

Ajay Heble introduces the keynote speaker.

Anglican Priest, Jamie Howison, delivers a keynote entitled, “Improvisation as an Act of Faith.”

There were lots of engaged questions from the audience.

Lauren Levesque (Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice, University of Guelph), “Protest Music Performances as Methodological Frameworks for Re-envisioning Engaged Spirituality: Implications for Improvisation.”

The event concluded with a fully improvised performance.

Adapted from a write-up by Lauren Levesque.
All Photos by Paul Watkins.

December 10, 2013December 10, 2013 pauldbwatkins Music Video

Sun Ra’s Bounce

So I leave the word space open, like space is supposed to be, when I say space music.
-Sun Ra

Dedications takes various phonogrooves (from jazz, hip-hop, and spoken word, to unusual recontextualized samples) and mélanges them together to create polyvalent dedications to a host of musicians and poets. One of those dedications is to the iconic jazz figure—from Saturn—Sun Ra. Below is a quick video photo mix I made in honour of Sun Ra’s alternative views and musical space. Such alternative listening spaces become for an artist like Sun Ra, an effort to relocate himself and escape the limits of earth.

December 5, 2013January 13, 2014 pauldbwatkins Music, Poetry, sound poetry

DJ Techné, Dedications

I say, play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing, even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.
-Thelonious Monk

Lots going around on pauldbwatkins.com (Riffings) these days. You might have noticed the new look to my website. It’s still a work in progress, but take a look around. The other big news is that I’ve finally finished my DJ project, Dedications. Dedications is an experimental jazzy hip-hop remix project born out of a love of listening to records. The album mixes, mashes, samples, spins, cuts, signifies, rhapsodizes, poetizes, layers, collages, remixes, breaks, distresses, archives, remakes, reshapes, and re-edits pieces of recorded history to create a sonic audio homage to a host of musicians and styles with a nod to the avant-garde. There is a lot of poetry on the album because, as a literary scholar, I have also always understood that poetry is musical, and that music is poetical.

Dedications takes various phonogrooves (from jazz, hip-hop, and spoken word, to unusual recontextualized samples) and mélanges them together to create polyvalent dedications to a host of musicians and poets. If you listen closely you will hear William Blake (with Archie Shepp), Sun Ra, Glenn Gould, Pharoah Sanders, Ravi Shankar, Inspectah Deck, Jack Kerouac, Ella Fitzgerald, The Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron, Charlie “Bird” Parker (with Ontario songbirds), Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane (with Michael S. Harper), Louis Armstrong (with Gwendolyn Brooks), Fats Waller, Earl Birney, the poetry of The Four Horseman, Tom Waits, John G. Diefenbaker, Ginsberg reading Howl over Horace Parlan’s keys, A Japan Airlines record chopped up, Thelonious Monk accompanied by Amiri Baraka, MF Doom, and Mutabaruka dubbing over The Zombies, among a myriad of other sounds, samples, echoes, and cuts. At times I add a live-recorded layer of chant, singing bowl, or beatbox. I played almost all the drums on an MPC, and most of the samples are recorded live from vinyl. If I made a mistake in a recording, I usually embraced it as part of the process.

In short, I hope you enjoy the album. It is available for streaming below, or for free download (name your price), here.

December 4, 2013January 8, 2014 pauldbwatkins Album Review, Art

Rutherford Chang’s The White Album

I own my share of peculiar records: The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead (read by Timothy Leary); Natural Childbirth (an early 1950s record that documents the live birth of a baby); a record that is only frog sounds; a yodeling record; and to my growing vinyl oddities, I can now add Rutherford Chang’s The White Album. Rutherford Chang has been getting a lot of press for his art project, “We Buy White Albums,” where he only purchases copies of The Beatles’ White Album, displayed at a gallery (set up like a record shop) that only carries the iconic double album. All of the albums are first-pressings and Rutherford Chang’s website now lists the total number of copies at 918. At some point during the exhibit (here’s an interview on the process), Rutherford thought, “I wonder what it sounds like if you play 100 copies of The White Album at once?” And that’s exactly what Chang’s The White Album does: 100 (45 year-old) first-pressings of The White Album are synced up in a bizarre sound collage that moves in and out of the familiar and into the choral and cacophonous. Each copy of the record is unique, and given the slight sound variations in pressings, and the natural and scratched wear of vinyl, the listening experience captures the distinct history of each record. We start off with a familiar, but muddier version of “Back in the U.S.S.R,” and then move into uncontrollably new territory as the records slowly coast out of sync over the course of each side. Chang even layered the gatefold cover and disc labels with the worn and hand-drawn originals to create a visual collage that reworks the featureless original and highlights the individual history of each copy.

Poster of the 100 albums. — The poster of the 100 albums.

Pressed in a very limited run—which sold out quick—I am happy to add Chang’s The White Album to my vinyl collection. Of course, some purists might disavow the album, while others will welcome this innovative project as being in line with the experimental spirit of late-period Beatles. Have a listen for yourself.

November 24, 2013 pauldbwatkins Film, review

Tsotsi: The Transformative Power of Hope

The following is a throwback (slightly amended) review I wrote in 2006. This is nearly four years before I published anything in any format. I found it on my hard drive and felt it worth sharing, even if the language is simpler (perhaps more straightforward) than I often write reviews in these days. I have a couple more of these old reviews I might share at some point. Anyways, Tsotsi is a fantastic film, and one I need to certainly watch again soon.

Life is a game of chance: we do not know whether we will be born into poverty or riches. At the same time, the decisions we make invariably influence the path we walk. The theme of chance is emphasized in the opening shots of Tsotsi as we watch Tsotsi’s gang roll dice, set in the monochromatic shades of a dark, dingy shack. Tsotsi, which literally means “thug,” is an effective and poignant film directed by Gavin Hood (adapted from an Athol Fugard novel) about a young man named Tsotsi who embarks on a transformative journey, set in motion by the helplessness of a baby. Tsotsi had no intention of kidnapping the baby, discovering it in the backseat of a car he stole after shooting its mother while she got out to ring the buzzer at her gate. The early contrast between the rich and poor communities depicts the austere differences between life in the broken-down shanty township of Soweto to which Tsotsi belongs, and the baby’s parents’ gated, luxurious home in the wealthy community of Joburg, illustrated with masterful cuts of cinematography. Fanon’s article “On Violence” provides an accurate description of what the shantytowns look like in the film: “It’s a world of no space, people are piled one on top of the other, the shacks squeezed tightly together” (4). Tsotsi is a killer, a fact brutally fleshed out earlier in the film by his senseless murder of man on a crowded train in order to steal his wallet. With this knowledge, it would seem that Tsotsi is unfit to take care of a baby, but for some intrinsic reason he takes on this task.

The acting from the almost all African cast is superb, and the young actor (Presley Chweneyagae) who plays Tsotsi has a magnificent amount of control over his emotions, ensuring his portrayal never crosses into melodramatic hamming. There is no sentimentalized view of poverty in this film, and we are not made to feel sympathetic towards Tsotsi. Rather, we journey alongside his transformative awakening on a thin line of hope: a hope that in the end he will do the right thing and give the baby back to its rightful guardians. Because the film is shot within close fields of vision, we are able to see what goes on inside Tsotsi’s head. Metaphorically, Tsotsi undergoes a medieval psychomachia of sorts—a battle for his soul, which the director carefully depicts vis-à-vis subtle shots of Tsotsi walking centre screen down a railway track. Tsotsi has become so dependant on wearing the mask of his public persona that intense feelings of his own innocence bleed into his private sphere where he has become protector of a baby he loves as if it was his own. The tragic comedy results from Tsotsi’s lack of knowing how to take care of a baby: he uses newspapers as diapers, and carries him around with him in a shopping bag. Fortunately Miriam, a nursing mother, provides a counterpoint to Tsotsi’s frustration and helps to gradually ignite a spark of love within Tsotsi’s psyche, deeply buried since his childhood.

Truly, the film is about hope and overcoming one’s odds against the shit cards life can sometimes deal. Tsotsi does not romanticize poverty, glamorize violence, or make us sympathetic towards a violent young man like Tsotsi; rather, it allows us to see the effects and suddenness of violence. Violence committed by the oppressor is passed onto the oppressed in a vicious cycle: the oppressed are left in poverty, while the rich get richer. Tsotsi represents the possibility that maybe the cycle can be broken: a hope for a post-apartheid South African black teenager, and a hope that Tsotsi can become a better person and ultimately do the right thing. In the context of the film, that’s giving the baby back and allowing reconciliation to take place within himself for his own troubled past—allegorical of the reconciliation process in South African. The film follows this progressive journey right up to its heavy ending, which we watch in a perpetual state of anticipation. The film does not try and prescriptively solve the enormous condition of poverty in South Africa; instead, the film traverses beyond the realm of violence, using the theme of forgiveness as a way to move forward and rebuild. The process of moving forward is an utterly frightening concept for Tsotsi, but there is a hopefulness that things can and should be better than they are, at least within his own world.

Check out the trailer:

Works Cited

Fanon, Frantz. “On Violence.” The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 2006. Print.

November 21, 2013December 4, 2013 pauldbwatkins Album Review, improvisation

Wadada Leo Smith

Wadada Leo Smith is a trumpeter and mercurial composer working at the edges of avant-garde jazz and free improvisation. Perhaps the rightful heir to Miles Davis, Smith is known for his introverted style of playing and his incredible use of space. In the 1960s he gained experience performing in R&B groups, later playing in the military, and in 1967 he was a member of Chicago’s AACM, going on to form his own group, New Dalta Ahkri, playing with such free jazz luminaries as Henry Threadgill, Anthony Davis, Oliver Lake, and Anthony Braxton, among others. He was one of three finalists for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music for the incredible American civil rights-era odyssey, Ten Freedom Summers (2012).

Smith's Golden Quartet at the Guelph Jazz Festival. — Smith’s Golden Quartet at the Guelph Jazz Festival.

William Parker introduced Smith and his quartet. The two jazz luminaries share an embrace.

At 273 minutes the four-disc box set, Ten Freedom Summers, is an epic free jazz/classical/astral work that rightfully belongs in the jazz lexicon alongside Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite, or Ellington’s Black, Brown, and Beige. Ten Freedom Summers evokes the civil rights movement through a series of freedom motifs and dedications, including a piece dedicated to Emmett Till, the Dred Scott case, the black church, Rosa Parks, and moves forwards (or backwards) to September 11th. Smith can shift the focus on an entire improvising ensemble at the sudden sound of a single note. While Ten Freedom Summers is meticulously composed, Smith wrote improvised elements into his masterwork, which could be heard by Smith and his Golden Quartet during their performance at this year’s 20th Anniversary Guelph Jazz Festival (GJF) in moments of atomized energy. Sections of Ten Freedom Summers were performed at the GJF with Smith’s Golden Quartet of Anthony Davis on piano, John Lindberg on double bass, and Anthony Brown on drums.

Have a listen to “Martin Luther King, Jr.” by Wadada Leo Smith from Ten Freedom Summers:

Also, check out the Golden Quartet’s “Rosa Parks” (excerpt), from the album Tabligh:

All Photos by Paul Watkins.

November 16, 2013December 5, 2013 pauldbwatkins Poetry

the multiplicity of everyday life (poem, draft)

before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half of the world.
-Martin Luther King Jr.

polyphonic murmurings
the city speaks
even while it sleeps.
we are more than ourselves
the sum of our parts
is the larger part of something.
the whole world is allegorical.

our coffee is a miracle of globalization:
a seed is planted,
years later little nimble fingers harvest the cherries:
roasted, processed, it arrives across oceans, hot java,
we sip its velvety elixir & go about our day.

wearing bluejeans, crafted from swaths of denim in a factory
somewhere on a map in a county we’ve never been to.
we transport bodies in oiled machines that run on the commerce of drilling,
& eat our lunches in the break rooms of silent killings.

a solitary pig travels from farmactory to the killing fields.
we eat the animal we never could never know,
walk our dogs after, pet our cats, & yet,
all our bellies buzz with bellowing hunger.

we are all hungry for love, for comfort, for the workings of everyday niceties.
there is no human that is not a part—however apart—of the cacophonous pulling of all things.

the exploding of ourselves is like the imploding stars we’ve inherited.
we share in the cry of babies & the undulation of the ocean.
even if you can’t see or hear the howl of a starving child, we still play part to its cosmic tragedy.
miracles don’t end at the bottom of a coffee cup thrown casually into a recycling receptacle.

they end cause life gets in the way.