{"id":6143,"date":"2017-09-11T12:19:28","date_gmt":"2017-09-11T19:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=6143"},"modified":"2017-09-11T12:34:36","modified_gmt":"2017-09-11T19:34:36","slug":"moment-silence-emmanuel-ortiz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2017\/09\/11\/moment-silence-emmanuel-ortiz\/","title":{"rendered":"“A Moment of Silence” by Emmanuel Ortiz"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Before I begin this poem, I\u2019d like to ask you to join me in a moment of silence in honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001.I would also like to ask you to offer up a moment of silence for all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes, for the victims in Afghanistan, Iraq, in the U.S., and throughout the world.And if I could just add one more thing\u2026A full day of silence\u2026 for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of U.S.-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation.Six months of silence\u2026 for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result<\/p>\n

of a 12-year U.S. embargo against the country.<\/p>\n

\u2026And now, the drums of war beat again.<\/p>\n

Before I begin this poem, two months of silence\u2026 for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa, where \u201chomeland security\u201d made them aliens in their own country<\/p>\n

Nine months of silence\u2026 for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where death rained down and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin, and the survivors went on as if alive.<\/p>\n

A year of silence\u2026 for the millions of dead in Viet Nam\u00ad\u2014a people, not a war\u2014for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives bones buried in it, their babies born of it.<\/p>\n

Two months of silence\u2026 for the decades of dead in Colombia, whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have piled up and slipped off our tongues.<\/p>\n

Before I begin this poem,
\nSeven days of silence\u2026 for El Salvador
\nA day of silence\u2026 for Nicaragua
\nFive days of silence\u2026 for the Guatemaltecos
\nNone of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years.
\n45 seconds of silence\u2026 for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas\u2026
\n1,933 miles of silence\u2026 for every desperate body
\nThat burns in the desert sun
\nDrowned in swollen rivers at the pearly gates to the Empire\u2019s underbelly,
\nA gaping wound sutured shut by razor wire and corrugated steel.<\/p>\n

25 years of silence\u2026 for the millions of Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke into the sky.
\nFor those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees
\nIn the south\u2026 the north\u2026 the east\u2026 the west\u2026
\nThere will be no dna testing or dental records to identify their remains.<\/p>\n

100 years of silence\u2026 for the hundreds of millions of indigenous people
\nFrom this half of right here,
\nWhose land and lives were stolen,
\nIn postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears
\nNames now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness\u2026<\/p>\n

From somewhere within the pillars of power
\nYou open your mouths to invoke a moment of our silence
\nAnd we are all left speechless,
\nOur tongues snatched from our mouths,
\nOur eyes stapled shut.<\/p>\n

A moment of silence,
\nAnd the poets are laid to rest,
\nThe drums disintegrate into dust.<\/p>\n

Before I begin this poem,
\nYou want a moment of silence\u2026
\nYou mourn now as if the world will never be the same
\nAnd the rest of us hope to hell it won\u2019t be.
\nNot like it always has been.<\/p>\n

\u2026Because this is not a 9-1-1 poem
\nThis is a 9\/10 poem,
\nIt is a 9\/9 poem,
\nA 9\/8 poem,
\nA 9\/7 poem\u2026
\nThis is a 1492 poem.
\nThis is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.<\/p>\n

And if this is a 9\/11 poem, then
\nThis is a September 11th 1973 poem for Chile.
\nThis is a September 12th 1977 poem for Steven Biko in South Africa.
\nThis is a September 13th 1971 poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York.
\nThis is a September 14th 1992 poem for the people of Somalia.
\nThis is a poem for every date that falls to the ground amidst the ashes of amnesia.<\/p>\n

This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told,
\nThe 110 stories that history uprooted from its textbooks
\nThe 110 stories that that cnn, bbc, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored.
\nThis is a poem for interrupting this program.<\/p>\n

This is not a peace poem,
\nNot a poem for forgiveness.
\nThis is a justice poem,
\nA poem for never forgetting.
\nThis is a poem to remind us
\nThat all that glitters
\nMight just be broken glass.<\/p>\n

And still you want a moment of silence for the dead?
\nWe could give you lifetimes of empty:
\nThe unmarked graves,
\nThe lost languages,
\nThe uprooted trees and histories,
\nThe dead stares on the faces of nameless children\u2026<\/p>\n

Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
\nOr just long enough to hunger,
\nFor the dust to bury us
\nAnd you would still ask us
\nFor more of our silence.
\nSo if you want a moment of silence<\/p>\n

Then stop the oil pumps
\nTurn off the engines, the televisions
\nSink the cruise ships
\nCrash the stock markets
\nUnplug the marquee lights
\nDelete the e-mails and instant messages
\nDerail the trains, ground the planes.
\nIf you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window
\nof Taco Bell
\nAnd pay the workers for wages lost.
\nTear down the liquor stores,
\nThe townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the Penthouses
\nand the Playboys.<\/p>\n

If you want a moment of silence,
\nThen take it
\nOn Super Bowl Sunday,
\nThe Fourth of July,
\nDuring Dayton\u2019s 13 hour sale,
\nThe next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful brown people have gathered.<\/p>\n

You want a moment of silence
\nThen take it
\nNow,
\nBefore this poem begins.
\nHere, in the echo of my voice,
\nIn the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
\nIn the space between bodies in embrace,
\nHere is your silence.
\nTake it.
\nTake it all.
\nBut don\u2019t cut in line.
\nLet your silence begin at the beginning of crime.<\/p>\n

And we,
\nTonight,
\nWe will keep right on singing
\nFor our dead.<\/p>\n

Emmanuel Ortiz is a third-generation Chicano\/Puerto Rican\/Irish-American community organizer and spoken word poet. He is the author of a chapbook of poems,\u00a0The Word Is a Machete\u00a0(self-published, 2003), and coeditor of\u00a0Under What Bandera?: Anti-War Ofrendas from Minnesota y Califas\u00a0(Calaca Press, 2004). He is a founding member of Palabristas: Latin@ Word Slingers, a collective of Latin@ poets in Minnesota. Emmanuel has lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Oakland, California; and the Arizona\/Mexico border. He currently lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the \u201cbuckle of the Bible Belt,\u201d with his two dogs, Nogi and Cuca. In his spare time, he enjoys guacamole, soccer, and naps.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

click to listen   Before I begin this poem, I\u2019d like to ask you to join me in a moment of silence in honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001.I would also like to ask you to offer up a… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6143"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6143"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6151,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6143\/revisions\/6151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}