Easter 2016 by Cath Blackfeather

So, they still come,
Tramping in their thousands
Around the edges of your civilization.

You say HE came among us
And suffered for our sins.
HE died so we may live forever. You sing your hymns and thank your God.

You, standing behind your razor wire,
Did you notice, as they stumble past your jeers,
The crown of thorns that sends
A dark trickle down the sweat of that man’s face?
Did you see, under the bulky
Charity-given coat,
The wound in that woman’s side?
This child, who sleeps under a tree in the freezing rain,
Outflung arms and small body twisted
In a familiar pose.

You still want them to die
So we may live forever.

Christmas 2015 by Cath Blackfeather

Each one of us is born

Each one of us will die,

We come into this world

A divine spark of life,

We grow and become

And try to share our light,

Then we all pass

Into the night.

..

I just want to know it all makes sense

I just want to feel there’s a reason we’re here,

When everything’s hard and I’m full of pain,

I want to know God is here.

..

When my sister is starving and cold,

And my brother is caught up in war,

And change is too sudden, and all seems lost,

And politicians only trumpet fear,

When little children who could have been me,

Tramp across deserts, desperate to flee,

..

I don’t need to know there’s life after death,

I don’t need to be washed in more blood,

There’s too many dying for others’ sins,

I just need to know God is near.

..

The wonder of life is

A great gift to us all.

Then it just empties away

After being so full.

Is it death that makes us

So fearful of life?

So we lay waste the Earth

Who gave us all birth?

..

I don’t need to make a crusade

To stand up and proclaim a Name.

Life is a fog, nothing is clear,

All I need to know is God is near.

..

So, a divine child was born of woman,

That miracle happens every day.

If we think it was only the once

We’ve missed what He was trying to say.

If I don’t see Christ in my enemy’s face,

And I don’t see God when I look within,

Then I’m just going to continue to

Make others die for my sins.

..

I don’t need your foolish Resurrection,

If you lay the Earth to waste here,

While you preach your hate and poison the world.

I need you to know God is near.

..

On reading about two children under 11 who were raped by soldiers in Sudan by Cath Blackfeather

If I were the only little girl

Who was held down

And raped

That would be one too many.

..

If these two little girls

Whose bodies were split apart,

Their secret, sacred places

Made into raw meat,

Were the only ones,

That would be too many.

..

I am sinking under

The sewage tide of

Laughing, cheerful men,

With eyes fixed zealously on

Their great tasks,

The wonders they will perform

To make the world in their own image,

While little bodies lie stunned

Under them.

I can’t give up,

Because they don’t.

I have to keep going,

Because they do.

..

My crone-womb hangs

Like a dry piece of meat

In the bone-bowl of me.

But it speaks in the quietest,

Deepest voice of all.

A whisper that is of the Earth.

That shrieks the rage the outrage

Of us all.

It is our blood that is sacrificed

In this most un-sacred way.

..

When mothers tramp thousands of miles

To find a safe place for their daughters

And are turned away, traded and discarded,

Again and again.

And they walk on, further.

I, too, must hold on.

Because they do.

I have to remember who I am,

Because they do.

On the Decision not to Go and Search for Refugees in Boats on the Mediterranean Sea, December 2014. by Cath Blackfeather

A camera noses through a rusted hulk,
Sea-life swarms and clings on the fecund surfaces.
We shift our gaze, re-focus.
The fish quietly strip flesh from
Bodies, scattered like the contents
Of burst suitcases on the ocean floor.

They did as all our ancestors did –
Walked across tracts of desert,
Left where they were, to go somewhere else new.
Somewhere clean and clear
And no dead piled up.

But there was no such place, they’re all taken.
Their brave, pioneering desperation
Was not enough to keep them afloat.

Daddy-God by Cath Blackfeather

We were singled out
And told we were special.
Always special – no matter how it hurt.
We were the Ones.

You never lose that, you know,
When Daddy comes to you in the middle of the night
And teaches you special things –
You know you are chosen.

When they choose you for pain,
You know you are unique.
That so commonplace act
Is your sign and badge.

This planet is soaked in the blood
Of mass graves and holocausts.
But for us it is who we are,
We and Daddy-God, At-One.

We wail our lamentations
And are thrilled to the bones.
It is the bitter herb
That feeds our souls.

Only we, amongst the slaughtered millions,
Know that this is our special destiny.
We were promised, no matter how he hurts us,
We are blessed among nations.

Turn your eyes from the others.
The lessons learned are not about them.
Hate us! Smear the walls of our temples.
We are Chosen – always us.

Gaza 2014 by Cath Blackfeather

The anger rolls on generation after generation,
Will it ever stop, we ask?
Where did they learn to
Immure a whole people in a ghetto,
A tiny square of land where
They’d be sitting targets?
The numbers of dead children numb my brain.
It is the images of mile upon mile of piled rubble
And nowhere to run,
And nothing to live on,
While on the other side sirens
Call the people to run
Through leafy, well-tended suburbs
To shelters, safe, and well-built,
While futile shells spatter a few holes
And rattle some dishes.

These rockets won’t return
Your great-grandfather’s olive grove
That he planted for you, my brother.
They are stones in boys’ hands
Against a rank of mighty tanks.
Though they make you feel a man
Who can stand, at least stand.

We sit in our comfortable houses
Half a world away
And beg you to stop.
But it never will. You never will.
The horror of those few years of history
When helpless millions were packed like cattle
And taken to slaughter,
Is still etched in nightmare,
As if those tattooed numbers have now become DNA.