Press "Enter" to skip to content

To Make 

To the Liberals,

To the fence-sitters,

To the Leftists who haven’t left yet.

To the Libertarians still liberating their minds,

l you the revolution has already occurred.

And it is time to start acting accordingly.

Pick up any history book worth its weight in citations,

And flip to the section of any great turning,

And you will discover in fact,

That there is no point at which we could tell the difference

Between the past, and now.

No, event that scholars agree was what changed everything,

It is always going to change,

Too complex to come to consensus on.

So stop waiting.

 

Just pick one.

Find that one time in your life that you can point to.

Find the event where you were not the same after.

And make it your own point of no return.

 

The revolution is over with.

Time to start living like

We write history

Because we do.

There is a reason that we do not have movies about people who,

 

“passively ride the tide of history.”

It’s always about the ones who MAKE it.

Though we are told that we are not those people.

 

Poem, from Latin, poema, from ancient Greek, “I make”

 

We write history with each word.

It is an active process.

 

So this is a public service announcement!

The idea that history comes in books is the biggest farce ever pulled.

It is a heist.

Take it back.

Rip history from the hands of your leaders

Tear it out of the halls of academia.

Weave its threads into your banners, flags and bootsteps.

Tie your laces with it or forever tie your tongues.

 

Would we really be able to live in a world where we knew

We were responsible for what happened?

Can we accept that truth?

And what of the ones of us who are history’s victims?

The ones living in the traps

Created by our predecessors? The ones still

Fighting the tide of Jim Crow?

The ones drowning in the undertow?

What of the ones stuck in the flow?

Fighting the tide out of our lungs?

What of the ones with more air than others?

Those who are smothered in access to opportunities?

How do we use the riches

That were gifted to us

Before we knew how to ask?

 

An eddie is notable,

But it is just a confluence of all the other currents.

There are many even when they don’t collide.

 

So here’s,

To the death of oppression,

The end of exploitation,

To workers standing up for themselves and taking back their wages,

For the water droplets tired of trickling down

To take the whole fucking river,

Because they created it,

To the glaciers breaking the mountains of capital.

 

Here’s to those of us still afraid.

Because fear let’s us know that we are taking risks.

Fear let’s us know we’re outside our safety zone.

Fear let’s us know we’re on the road to moving through it.

 

Brian McCracken is a poet, activist, and youth ally living and resisting in Olympia.

 

Next:
Throughout our childhood, our immigrant parents modeled in consistent action,…