Angel Yourself

Snow angels, dirt angels, sand angels, I've made them, trash angels, glass angels, and criminal angels, we've framed them: let's privatize the prisons so rehabilitation is a conflict of interest. Interest they ask, how much can we charge? Sky's the limit, but heck I can't even see the sky anymore and as we become a prison nation sending thousands in for minor offenses to be burned to know that this is really what it means to be American, I look down searching for my own feet and I find instead my footprints… because they've changed things. I don't know who They are but They've changed things -the timelines of our existence fragmented, isolated and manipulated until the present is numbed into the past and the future is what we long apathetically for as our present. And the past? The past becomes a mother with aching feet and wide hip bones and hands and fingers twisted and pained after years of arthritis that didn't stop for loads of laundry that over the years could have covered all the land mines in Afghanistan, but no her broken hands didn't stop for sinks perpetually full of dirty dishes that over the years could have filled the unmarked graves of the holocausts but no that didn't stop her pain from keeping her dreams indefinitely deferred in the desolate desert oceans of our polluted world of her life. Broken hands, loads of laundry, land mines, unmarked graves, overflowing sinks and dirty waters, don't think I've forgotten about your father, don't think I've forgotten about your rapist father… just remember this: your woman, your mother, your past. Kali Ma, I know the name sounds strange, so foreign to your tongue an awkward mouthing but don't underestimate the past, she made you and that goddess can destroy you. We've made our America like a castle of cards all resting on a Queen and yet we had the audacity to imprison her in a private prison and break her overworked hands and try to forget her but she is our destiny and our foundation our sister, our friend, our wife, our mother, our lover, our girlfriend, our daughter and if we forget her, our damnation. Don't forget her, please don't forget her, your past, the past, made of wrongs and outrages, protests and truths. I am talking to this nation: you won't find your mother in a history book so why are you looking there for the past? Maybe you should be looking at the skins of the angels around us to see our present and remember our past.
Black Angels, White Angels, Brown Angels, I've hated them, Yellow angels, red angels, third world angels, we've berated them : let's tour the little consumerist America's of impoverished nations and become blind to anything but the aesthetic exotica of their existence. Who isn't attracted to the erotica of a persistent ethnic identity, but let's not look for culture in museums because there it's only in glass boxes for display that say do not touch. We are untouchable but not unreachable so distant and somehow so agreeable to glass boxes, they aren't glass houses and I'm not throwing stones I'm throwing myself word by word. Keep your hands to yourself they told us in kindergarden and I've followed that rule so well I don't remember the last time I was being touched unless I was being fucked, beaten or taking my change from the cashier. Hold the price check on fruit juice. Come touch me, I might flinch but you should do it anyways. I might cringe but hold me anyways, I might cry but you should kiss me anyways just like culture might be projected as a commodity but you should honor it anyways without cheapening it by buying into it. Keep my identity out of museums that are extensions of the colonial empire where they take facades of temples and make them facades for culture behind glass boxes just like my brown skin is but a glass box hiding some other aspect of my identity that you should try to touch.
Love angels, hate angels, death angels I've desired them. Pain Angels Fate Angels, Life Angels I'm tired of them because I'm inspired by them. Don't you dare question my volatility I'm not simply some little brown girl five foot two who lies about her name to strangers I stage riots in the name of your emancipation, I light fires in the name of your declarations I kiss the ground upon which you walk not because I worship you but I bow to the divine in you but I can still fuck with you and be in love with you because you're an angel. Lay down in the snow, lay down in the dirt, lay down in the trash or lay down in the clouds and flap your arms and your legs and each of you can make an angel I know it sounds hokey and full of lullaby inspiration shit but defenestrate your acquiescent tendency to dismiss and recognize that the angel that you make is yourself.