Remembering Heather Heyer, Killed in Charlottesville a Year Ago, a Martyr in the Struggle Against the Forces of White Supremacy, Racism, And Neo-Fascism Unleashed by the Devil in the White House

American Martyr: Heather Heyer, 1985–2017

We cry for the loss of an American woman
First death by murder
in the resistance to the Big Lie
and all the little liars,
wherein we pull down both statue and state
of the Abomination installed
by the Abominables.
We call for justice,
for the condemnation
of the murderers,
of the haters
who caucus with death
who toast the suffering of the poor
with chalices of blood.
We call as well
For the waters of truth
to cleanse us
For the rivers of division
for those who emerge cleansed
and those who sink below
For the vines to bind us
For the trees to grow over the burial of ancient wounds.
We call for the skies to rain forgiveness on those
too weary to act,
unable, or unwilling, to remove the age’s blot on the
name of humanity
For the sword of vengeance
that cleaves the sickness and leaves the body whole
For the blood that restores
the wound
And for the return of those who were taken
from a courthouse
or a school yard
or a meeting
with the Liar-in-Chief’s Agents of Injustice
We mourn the death of an open land,
a land without fences
without borders militarized
by killing words and ancient, nourished hates
We pray for words
to scald the guilty
and soothe the urge to take the body
of those who caucus with oppression
who toast the humiliations of the poor
with cupped hands of martyr’s blood
… as they have taken the
flesh and the blood of the martyr.

2.
A life’s full measure
drained upon a murdered street.
A mother, a woman of an aging generation
who lived, perhaps, as many of us did
the youthful dream of the beloved republic,
honored places,
and seamlessly un-stated lives,
now brutally shorn of love’s full future
and companionship.

We turn to the martyrs,
then and now,
we offer our thoughts,
we smaller souls,
our still living dreams,
and wordless hope:
Guide us to the sacred place
where the heart knows
what to do
and does it simply
in obedience to the voice within.

We supplicate to the four directions
to the places beyond the dim morass
of blasted times
for deliverance from the wastelands
of the bloated, lie-fed country
and for renewal of the gleaming sands and green islands
of the great good world,
new to the mind
and growing endlessly
before us.