Lorraine Bonner, Oakland based artist, combines her exquisite sculpture with beautifully moving poetry…
“Trust is Your Birthright” by Lorraine Bonner © 2014
I am a woman who studies the perpetrator
with my outer eye, and in my mind.
Like many, I have been his victim,
my shame as much a part of me as my breath,
hurting less, the more shallow my life.
I believed that my brokenness was my own fault,
I must have done something wrong,
I kept my feelings to myself, in my head,
I must be wrong
While my heart shattered, leaking grief.
Do you see yourself in me?
We all break differently,
few are unbroken.
We take what action we can against pain too great to bear.
This is my brother.
He shoots the person he sees in the mirror.
Look beyond the mirror, brother:
the perpetrator gives everybody guns,
As long as we shoot ourselves
as long as we shoot each other
As long as we shoot at mirrors.
while the perpetrator comes and takes
again and again.
and there is no word large enough
to cry my loss
Everyday more of the world lives this
and if you think you are safe
You are wrong
Already you have lost much that is irreplaceable
When I had no words, clay found me,
dense as my flesh, knowing no deceit
teaching me there is no difference between myself and the world.
At the center of perpetration a violation of trust
a child’s body desecrated, the earth poisoned
people enslaved, tortured, cast aside,
their wealth and dignity stolen
Something has changed.
Cycles of trust and caring that sustained our kind for a million years
Have been broken.
There are those that are insatiable,
believing they have a “god-given” right to dominate,
and we are their food.
We seek relief in drugs and screens
we can no longer think
we doubt our sight
we eat our pain
we are entranced and the calm voice tells us:
“Hatred is the natural order,
Despair and hopelessness a normal state.”
Yet who knows how consciousness can shift?
A word awakened me, in a shaft of light
the mirror became a window and I saw the perpetrator
Clay was in my hands,
my hands knew what to do
they dragged the white, male, head
from my dark female body
and tore his violent tongue from my mind.
I am listening now,
listening for new words,
new colors, new music
I am listening for you,
you who were born innocent
Trust is your birthright
You are not to blame for the perpetrator
feeding on your still-living flesh
You have done nothing to deserve this pain.
Wake up!
Wake from the trance, from the lies
You are holding something in your hands
clay or paint, poetry, music
your genius for anything mechanical
the way you love, in spite of everything
your courage, your mind
Trust the gift that is in your hands
We are living in the end times of perpetration
Our hands know how to build a new world
Come! We have a universe of trust to explore together.
