Stubborn OR Our Stride is Wider Together

I don't often write performance poetry: it is different to songs: harder in some ways. This is my first. The birds are in Nymboida National park: you can hear bellbirds and parrots, the yellow tailed black cockatoo and I think even a pair of wedge-tailed eagles. Recorded on the Zoom 6 with the double mics.

Some call me stubborn

but I just know my own mind

I don’t have the same start

Or or the same finish line

As my bothers and sisters

their rhythm be different to mine

My time

is slower than some and

faster than others

though our flame is made of the same stuff

I’ve had enough

of this comparative competitive repetitive fisticuffs

I celebrate you and

I commiserate your losses

I’ll wave my hands in the air when you beat your Big Bosses and

I refuse to use

Jealousy or bitterness coz

The difference between us has seen us

divided

when it can redeem us leave us

connected with pride

our stride is wider

together

I cannot pretend that I am any better

than anyone else upon this earth

my worth

is determined

by the evidence

that I be.

You be.

We be.

I be

stubborn

Coz I know my own mind

You can’t tell me what to do

where to go or how to find

that which I seek

the words I speak

may be borrowed or re-used I hope not abused

I don't own the air which I set to vibrate

But I do care

About the ripples that I make

And so, I am learning to listen

For when my expression transmission

becomes a transgression

upon the weary hearts of others

whose mothers,

or mother's mothers,

or mother's mother's mothers

bore the brunt of some kind of war

Feel the weight that holds them under

While my fate

of birth, colour and culture

allows me to float

on a pretty boat

not unlike The Endeavor

Unless I put my ear to the surface

I wont hear the silence

of longtime injustice

I won't know I have power and privilege

I could lend to mend, I could share to care, could donate

to help heal this mess

of inheritance that my sleepy ignorance I perpetuates

For in my stubbornness I seek peace

and in my peacemaking I make enemies

And they call me stubborn to make me small

but they just don't get the concept responsibility of connected autonomy

See they call me stubborn

But

I call it

Free.

And in paraphrased epiphany quoting Professor Toni Morrison,

If you are free

your only job

is to help someone else find their freedom

Go.