The Power of Voice, The Power of Words

What does it mean to have voice? It refers to having strong opinions, values, and beliefs. When someone speaks passionately about a topic, the audience listens carefully and takes a mental note of it, in the same way, readers read carefully and take notes in a journal. When a strong voice draws us in, we channel the words through our own being and experience deep listening. We are left with a lasting impression. That is power. 

Listen to Suheir Hammad, a Palestinian-American poet from Brooklyn, NY, who has become a unique voice for those affected by individual struggles, war, and societal and cultural pressures and injustices. Her words are beautiful. Her words speak the truth. Her words attract listeners. Her words have power. 

"What I Will"

I will not dance to your war drum. 
I will not lend my soul nor my bones to your war drum. 
I will not dance to that beating. 
I know that beat.
It is lifeless. 

I know intimately that skin you are hitting. 
It was alive once.
Hunted. Stolen. Stretched. 
I will not dance to your drummed up war. 
I will not pop, spin, break for you. 
I will not hate for you or even hate you. 
I will not kill for you. 
Especially I will not die for you. 

I will not mourn the dead with murder nor suicide.
I will not side with you
or dance to bombs because everyone is dancing.
Everyone can be wrong.
Life is a right, not collateral or casual.
I will not forget where I come from.
I will craft my own drum. 

Gather my beloved near,
and our chanting will be dancing.
Our humming will be drumming. 
I will not be played.
I will not lend my name nor my rhythm to your beat.
I will dance and resist and dance and persist and dance.
This heartbeat is louder than death.
Your war drum ain’t louder than this breath.

" Break Clustered"

All holy history banned.
Unwritten books predicted the future, projected the past.
But my head unwraps around what appears limitless,
man's creative violence.
Whose son shall it be?
Which male child will perish a new day?
Our boys' deaths galvanize.
We cherish corpses.
We mourn women, complicated.
Bitches get beat daily.
Profits made, prophets ignored.
War and tooth enameled salted lemon childhoods.

All colors run, none of us solid.
Don't look for shadow behind me.
I carry it within.
I live cycles of light and darkness.
Rhythm is half silence.
I see now, I never was one and not the other.
Sickness, health, tender violence.
I think now I never was pure.
Before form I was storm, blind, ign'ant—still am.
Humanity contracted itself blind, malignant.
I never was pure.
Girl spoiled before ripened.
Language can't math me.
I experience exponentially.
Everything is everything.

One woman loses 15, maybe 20, members of her family.
One woman loses six.
One woman loses her head.
One woman searches rubble.
One woman feeds on trash.
One woman shoots her face.
One woman shoots her husband.
One woman straps herself.
One woman gives birth to a baby.
One woman gives birth to borders.
One woman no longer believes love will ever find her.
One woman never did.

Where do refugee hearts go?
Broken, dissed, placed where they're not from,
don't want to be missed.
Faced with absence.
We mourn each one or we mean nothing at all.
My spine curves spiral.
Precipice running to and running from human beings.
Cluster bombs left behind.
De facto landmines.
A smoldering grief.

Harvest contaminated tobacco.
Harvest bombs.
Harvest baby teeth.
Harvest palms, smoke.
Harvest witness, smoke.
Resolutions, smoke.
Salvation, smoke.
Redemption, smoke.
Breathe.
Do not fear what has blown up.
If you must, fear the unexploded.

Are there any other people whose voice and words have been memorable to you?