The mind is strong
You like to go into it
In times of pressure
In times of distress

It pulls you into it
It takes a great deal of energy
It's much more chill
In the body.

Unless you live in Palestine
Afghanistan
Syria Libya Lebanon Sudan
DRC
The South Side of Chicago
The Working Class of NYC

The Working.
Class.

The mind.
The body.
Labor. These calloused hands. This calloused mind.

Calloused against the boot. The pleather boot of the Marine. The Agent. The Cop. The Pig.

He called himself police. His hoodie and his trucker hat notwithstanding.
"Police," he said. But a lot of the police these days are black.
Blood on their uniforms. "Who's blood is this?"

Capturing themselves. Returning themselves.
But not these guys. The ICE guys calling themselves police.
Icy cold. Punk bitches. No badges. No names. Faces covered.

These public servants with their faces. Covered. And white. All of them white.
White like teeth. White like bones bleached white in the desert.
White like water drops punctured with white knife. Serving what force?

In the name of something white. While bones inside still bodies bleaching in the sun.
Bones inside the body.
"No more deaths," she said.

She was wearing hijab. Done nothing wrong.
Abducted and thrown into a cage.

By white men in masks.
For being a foreigner in a foreign land.
A land of foreigners.

Land of milk and honey. Land of concrete and fence. Land of bison.
Land of iron horses. Blood soaked land.

From the equator to the poles.
Arbeit macht frei in the prison camp.
Work makes free.

Work. Labor. The Body. These Hands These Calloused Hands.
Free. The Breath. The Spirit. Life itself. The mind. This Calloused Mind.

The Mind
The mind is strong.
You like to go into it. In times of distress. In times of pressure.

But the body is where the realness lives.
The body is where the being stays.
Free from abstraction and ought.

Free from hesitation and naught.
Clean like the river.
Untold like the story kept silent.

Her people carried her a distance before setting her down.
They moved her from the rubble.
And set her next to the rubble.

There was no doctor in the afternoon sun.
No service to come from the call.
They set her down knowing.

Her tiny hand leached in the field.
Silently the river is clot.
Dreams calloused bombardment.

Tourniquet sunset.
Rumble in the wall.
Is it me or the world that is shaking?

Is it the sun or the eye that lights the world?