This poem was written on a day when I was supposed to be doing grad school homework. I felt too distracted. I had spent much of the semester processing the ways colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism (especially from the U.S.) have shaped my family’s story, history, and culture in Honduras and—as we have moved away for opportunity over the past two generations–beyond Honduras to the U.S. and the Philippines.
It made me reflect on how much climate change resistance—as much as it comes in the form of collective power-building and organizing—first comes in the simple act of choosing to continue on, despite what you know about its roots, its dangers, and its real and constant consequences in our lives across generations.
When I feel too bogged down, I take heart and take courage from everyone I know who, in getting up and continuing despite the odds, form the bedrock of resistance.
I’ve been thinking about everyday courage
the courage shown by those people
who wake up every day
thinking about centuries of ships
carrying people treated as things
and blankets dipped in disease
who wake up every day
chafing under the coins they must carry
to eat and to drink and keep a roof
heavy with thoughts of next pay day
who wake up every day
worrying about what leaders they’ve never met
are developing in laboratories to perfect
means of murder at nation scales
who wake up every day
wondering if they or theirs will be next
the next name in the news
the next bloody body under the boys in blue
who wake up every day
counting their luck that no sirens signal
another leader of the cause being dragged off
to clog their sight and voice with bars
who wake up every day
sights set on futures in empires they know
are full of the very thieves whose pockets
swell with dignity stolen from back home
who wake up every day
and know to be seen celebrating
their own love and authenticity is to risk
the many ways an index finger kills
who wake up every day
twitching to check on their soil
and nurture the many things growing
to fill hearts and mouths in their garden
who wake up every day
tasting the air for what they might inhale
smog coughs or desiccating heat, subzero cold
violent winds snatching air from lungs
who wake up every day
stained by strokes of pens oceans away
that close schools and stop hospitals
and let foreign companies move in rent free
who wake up every day
listening for the ever-fading sound
of birdsong and earth’s trilling children
amidst the rumble of chainsaws and tires
who wake up every day
not wanting to turn on the lights
and feed the oilgas beasts spreading
poison through the land, through the waters
who wake up every day
holding angry sorrow and still
choose joy, spread love, raise their voice
refuse to let things lie
I lace my fingers in yours
you who feel what these words mean
racismcolonialismcapitalismimperialismpatriarchyheterosexismexploitationableismclimatechangecriminalizationfossilfuelsmassextinction
and get up every day anyways
holding tight in your fist
your right to dream and work for
another world
a different day
