(for Marge Piercy’s Vida)
By Stephen Mead
What mercy does history have?
A vindication or two shoves backward
for every thrust forth?
Lord, the walls of all buildings in every city
could be covered with the names, the faces, the graffiti of ghosts.
Are you a renegade?
What is your alias as you stand
with an untraceable phone calling your lover
who has another while the umbilicus rings
and rings to be picked up (surprise) by someone else,
perhaps some adrift bus station passerby, that being
who knows nothing of living hunted,
the wires tapped ... ?
Wanted, you are always wanted
for what birth your body could give
controlled by so many others the Supreme Court decrees,
your features distorted by disguises
as the Underground shifts like a river with a constant heart.
Human pilgrim, illegal native
lost like an alien to your own country,
you are a sacrifice to the cause
and even stronger than you realize
as the future moves onward
to be shaped where you meet it----
straight at the core
of corporate Justice-bought
supremely blown dynamo.
Stephen Mead is an Outsider multi-media artist and writer. Since the 1990s he’s been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print zines and eventually online. Recently his work has appeared in CROW NAME, WORDPEACE and DuckuckMongoose.Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, The Chroma Museum - The Chroma Museum (weebly.com)
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