may day

Today is a day for marching in the streets, and I'm heading out to do just that shortly in support of the No to HR 4437 immigrants' rights campaign (though in my case it will be more like limping through the streets, due to a nasty fall over a tree root halfway through today's run. Got up and ran the remaining 2.5k, then hobbled home to confront the rather nasty scrapes and bruises; no pretty spring skirts for me this week. Ow.)

In addition to the politics, though, there's poetry:

May Day

I've decided to waste my life again,
Like I used to: get drunk
On the light in the leaves, find a wall
Against which something can happen,

Whatever may have happened
Long ago - let a bullet hole echoing
The will of an executioner, a crevice
In which a love note was hidden,

Be a crag where a struggling tendril
Utters a few spare syllables at dawn.
I've decided to waste my life
In a new way, to forget whoever

Touched a hair on my head, because
It doesn't matter what came to pass,
Only that it passed, because we repeat
Ourselves, we repeat ourselves.

I've decided to walk a long way
Out of the way, to allow something
Dreaded to waken for no good reason,
Let it go without saying,

Let it go as it will to the place
It will go without saying: a wall
Against which a body was pressed
For no good reason, other than this.

Phyllis Levin

(credit to dear S., who introduced me to this one when she used it as her birthday-drinks invitation last year.)