Stand in rage as wind and current clash

       rile lightning and thunder

fire surge and boulder crash

     Let the ocean eat and scrape away these walls

Let the sand swallow their fences whole

    Let the air between us split the atmosphere

We have no land No country But we have these bodies these stories this language of rage left

             This resistance is bitter

and tastes like medicine Our lands replanted in the dark and warm there

We unfurl our tangled roots stretch

    to blow salt across
      
      blurred borders of memory  

         They made themselves

fences and bullets checkpoints gates and guardposts martial law

They made themselves hotels and mansions adverse possession eminent domain and deeds

               They made themselves 
                            
                             shine 
                                      
                  through the plunder

They say we can never— They say we will never—because because they—

        and the hills and mountains have been 

mined for rock walls the reefs pillaged for coral floors

They say we can never— and the deserts and dunes have been shoveled and taken for their houses and highways—

            because we can never— because 

the forests have been raided razed and scorched and we we the wards

refugees houseless present- absentees recognition refusers exiled uncivilized disposable natives

protester-activist-terrorist-resisters—

 our springs and streams have been

dammed—so they say we can never return

let it go accept this progress

stop living

in the past—

but we make ourselves

strong enough to carry all of our dead

  engrave their names in the clouds

We gather to sing whole villages awake

 We crouch down to eat rocks like fruit
           
       to hold the dirt the sand in our hands 

to fling words

  the way fat drops of rain 
            
       splatter off tarp or corrugated roofs

We remember the sweetness

     We rise from the plunder

       They say there is no return                             

           they never could really make us leave