6/22/00

Today is marked by travesty and beauty, by death and by life. It is an ordinary day, with ordinary circumstances, and there is no particular reason why I should be wearing a grim face and a forced calm. I am alive- I have a free mind- As such, I should be singing, or smiling, or making love. But my body will not act according to this love of life. My mind is caught in the suffocating gas chamber of American politics. My mind suffocates because another innocent man is being killed by the inneficacy of the "system", of the "man". Today, the scalpel of democracy's healing surgeon was stolen by a crude quack. A falsification of the word liberty, a pock mark on the face of justice, this is what we owe George W. Bush for trying to conceal the wound of justice with the stinging and rotting bandage of hate, racism, and ignorance.

The sun was setting and my stomach was full.The colors of life bleed into the sky, the red and orange violent against the pink and violet in front of my pensive eyes.

WBAI screamed its rage through its waves, and so we knew, that Shaka was dead. Executed. Murdered.

Outside the sun is shining and setting, light is muted by the submission to night. Both are constant and present.

Yet, my stomach feels empty. My tears are scalding. My tears are constant and present. The clouds of my soul are saturated with the salty presence of deception. But I know tomorrow a rainbow will soar- after it has rained, and after the sun has risen once more.

For tonight, I enjoy the thunder and lightning of awareness. I contemplate Shaka Sankofa. I free his dead body into my humble inner breath- this way, when I laugh, when I smile, when I make love- he is released from the suffocation of the present and blown into the free wings of the future

Lissette Olivares