War & Peace

A Soul Sisters’ Journey

P. Flores Perez, “Zapatistas,” n.d. Photographic postcard. Collection of Mexican Revolution photographs. (UCR Library, Special Collections & University Archives, University of California, Riverside.)

Curious thing.
How does a warrior befriend a peacemaker?
Not by happenstance
If you understand how
Love traverses all chasms
Truth bridges all gaps
Wisdom closes all divides

We are Siamese twins of the world’s trials
War and Peace
Where the Speaking ends, is where the Fight begins
And when they weary of War
They unclench fists and open mouths again
We’ve cross pathways often over the generations
We know each other well

Zulu Women and Child

Bonded because we learned long ago
Not to forgo our ancient knowledge
For their fabled re-tellings
That would have rendered us distant enemies
No, we stand together on the front lines
For the mothers, children, and
Even less innocent bystanders of history
Overcome their inertia to start movements
We break and make their equilibrium
Our very existence rebels against the status quo
We are merely different means to the same end

We know we are two sides of the same coin
Because what she will lay down her life for
I will make the hard sacrifice of compromise
One the victor or victim
At the hands of a surgical, fatal blow
The other sits at the table to give
And accept a million strategic cuts and carvings
Blood, sweat, and tears shed to make way
After all
We all have to die
Some day

Fearless Black Female Warriors of Dahomey Kingdom

Forever intertwined
Because we serve
driven by the same love
Of family, of our people
Our linage and our legacy
We love with the same bullish tenacity
we see it in each other’s faces
Those bloodlines crisscross
the Deep South, West Indies, and central Africa
Soulmated sisteren
Once reacquainted, we reorient each other
I see you queen
So we stand in those gaps, we fill the void
For each other
Because people always want to blame
The messenger
so the envoy stands in need of protecting
From the less diplomatic among us
And because a warrior heart needs counsel
And her soul needs peace
So she has a representative as she soldiers on

photo by Roger Ballan

So I am with you
And you are with me
And if God be for us
Then who can be against us
Where the lion meets the lamb
It is Here we determine the arc of this
World’s future

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