A Cold Day (spoken word performance)

Spoken word poetry performance. "Cold day" was written in response to the Parkland school shooting the US. For me, it was a week full of tears, clicking video after video, reading tweets and text messages. I have so much respect for this generation. I see the trauma they are living through, and even then, their response is to change the narrative and lay siege to the empire. (Performed at "Women Talk" event in Vancouver, BC).

COLD DAY

It is a cold day

When I click on the news

I see a burial cloth woven around the children

I curse

I sob

And the snow falls quiet around me

There is a spawning evil thing

Weaving a cold white cloth

On a bitter, bitter day

It weaves around them

And us

I see it

Cold and white

It comes

They will ask about

The day the stories stopped

The day the tears came

I will tell them

It was cold, like stone

Fast, hard

And full of sorrow

One by one

By one

In the doors

In the hallways

Alone

Together

Screaming as the cloth tightens around them

I will tell them

That I heard the horror

I watched your shaky videos

Gulping as I felt that shroud

Tighten around my own neck

Saw its thread spinning and taking us all

I am alone now

Alone and far away

And cold and still

And full of sorrow

But there is no gentle going for me

As I pull the woven tightness

Off my throat

The fate of the bard

Is to live and to tell

Rest in Peace

Children, Teachers, Lovers

I have work to do

© Diane Currie Sam