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Yes, We Have Made Them, and other poems

Yes, We Have Made Them, and other poems
Fri, 4/13/2012 - by Jacob Russell

Photo: Todd Asher. Bloomberg Tower.

Yes, we have made them…

the glass towers, the stone monuments

to every principle we have ever betrayed

a billion messages rising

invisibly…

what we choose

to ignore

has chosen us

the glass towers, the billions—

how they in turn

have made –

are making

us

their shadows

growing new powers

the planet turning

on its seasons

reaching hand to outstretched hand

raising

one another from our knees

taking up again the burden

the terrible lightness of freedom

 

Driving through the Holland Tunnel on …

…the way to Occupy Wall Street for every

tile worker’s hand the trowel he held

32 million tiles in the ceiling

2.9 million on the walls

set

one

by

one

how many laid by one man in an hour

a day counting

them in his sleep beside his wife

in a walk-up in Bayonne

14 workers died building that tunnel…

not one of them

named Holland

 

We hear them... ...the machines

of power, the Mayors don their armor

in Portland, St. Louis, Oakland, New York…
Darth Vaders by the

score

one!

for the 1%

can't they hear ?
the hour glass -- the sand
beneath the pillars

totter

to plastic pail drums --

old Joshua's trumpets
sound

the living & the dead parade
surround

a thousand City Halls! 

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