fuel

burned, all burned.

dragged from their homes, pilloried,
made to stand trial in rooms
where the air did not bend toward their truths,
no matter how honest they were.
taken from places of power
once they had been judged. burned,
and though the smoke lifted away from their bubbling torment
and settled onto the skin of those who had judged them,
it took them just moments
to wipe the obvious stains away.

and after that,
the burning again, and again,
for it is heat that makes the engines go.
what fuel is used is unimportant.
it will change every time a source is exhausted.
it will not matter to the tenders what new shape it takes,
or how the burning happens…through wood
or atom or zyklon-b, through poverty’s slow
coal seam smolder or in the death by tiny sparks
that comes from daily denial.

all fuel burns the same.
look into any ashes
and you will see yourself there.
do not pretend that if you were fuel once,
you are not now.
do not pretend that if you were a fire tender,
you can never burn.
do not pretend that they see a difference among you.
to them there is drought
and kindling
enough to keep this world
on fire forever,
as long as one man
with one match
can be made
to strike it.

so come.

come to the place of burning.
come as water this time.
come in the name of everyone once burned.
come up
from the unjust ashes
and drown that match. come up
from the wet of soaked old pyres
and drown it. come up
from the freezing graves of the middle passage
and drown it. come up
from sand creek’s shoals
and drown it. come up
from memory’s camps,
from the chimneys of horror,
from the alleys of walled remainder,
from the forests of hidden famine,
from the conflagrations of invasion,
colony, assimilation, genocide,
and every other firestarter,
come together to drown it…

but do not come with lightning
when you come.
bring no fire of your own.
come as rain only,
joining with stream and spring,
come a little at a time
until we build,
long and soaking,
to a steady downpour
swollen
with a billion times
a billion drops.

no end can come to this blaze
until we believe in our watery hearts
that every scrap of fuel
tastes the same to the tongue of a flame,
and that nothing left dry
will ever be proof
against it.