Mary Rizzo
 
 
 
 
 

Everything that came before is all the same   OR   what is your culture to me?

1

I am jesus
in a ripped sweatshirt
and black wool cap.
I see how you veer to avoid me.
when I ask for change
you shake your head and bury it
in your collar
but why are you afraid?
I am jesus.
 
 
 

2

I am free
running off the subway platform
jenny’s hand pulling mine, laughing
pausing to adjust straps and shoes
catch our breath as we emerge headfirst
looking for the club
we walk bravely through the bad neighborhood
until the black men eye our fine tank tops and extra wide pants.
you need some help?
But jenny pulls my hand
while they laugh, passing the brown bag
we hear the bass beat before we see the doorway, small,
nearly invisible, a hole in the crumbling decay of this city
where we don’t live
thumping out the rhythms of another place,
another world of life and blood and passion
we get by injection
jenny and I smile
check our pale images in each other’s faces
and notice the man lying on the street,
huddled, sleeping in the corner made by two buildings
newspapers protecting him from the cold but
I am free

 
 

3

I am new
to you
who don’t know my history.
it’s not written in too many books,
you don’t have to bother checking
I know what I know.
I’ve learned it from the land
which speaks to me and my past
mothers and fathers who have worked it
turned it over with tools and hands and have lost it
little by little, a bloodless amputation.
my brother goes to the mines
my sister to the factory
(none of us can breathe anyway)
I watch my father squeeze the dirt through his fingers,
read the newspapers, but who talks about us?
My family has lived and died on this land
for this land
unstinting in their love and generosity to it
but me,
I am new

 
 

4

I am revolution
changing the world
from my insides out.
fuck you amerika
with your shit capitalist jive
you’ve tried to colonize
my mind with your collegetvhollywood
but I believe in the politics
of ecstasy
LSD*TM*SDS
dropping out
to live lightly on the earth.
who needs your material things?
That’s what I said to my father
once the checkbook was away.
his eyes said I know you
we are the same, you and I, though you despise me now
like I despised my father and he his.
you’ve seen pictures of me in beret with bongoes
and grandpa went to the jazz clubs to live black
great granddad searched out the folk and kept their songs.
this is your patrimony
and you’re right
it is (one more)
revolution

 
 
 

  (c)Mary Rizzo 2003