One rebel made dissident mini-zines in his parents’ basement,
and left them in laundromats, buses and trains.
One rebel attended antiwar demonstrations for decades,
getting arrested eleven times.
One rebel carried a sharpie with him everywhere
and wrote “the tv is lying to you” in bathroom stalls.
One rebel left the cult and never looked back,
no matter how much her family begged her.
One rebel taught her children to never let anyone tell them who they are,
simply giving them the tools to form themselves from infancy.
One rebel opened his eyes in meditation
and saw a different world than when he’d closed them.
One rebel awakened the latent energy in her spine
and used it to clear ancient conditioning patterns.
One rebel shot a powerful documentary
about men who murder dolphins.
One rebel uploaded videos for years
calling the bastards what they are day after day after day.
One rebel finally stopped believing her mother’s lies,
saying, “This pain stops with me. I will heal.”
One rebel made street art that changed people forever,
unable to uproot the strange seeds that were planted.
One rebel taught his children how to love the wild outdoors,
and then taught his grandchildren, too.
One rebel painted “No War” on the side of the opera house.
One rebel cracked an egg on a Senator’s skull.
One rebel held up a sign saying “You’re Perfect”
because all the other signs say “You’re imperfect but I can fix you for money”.
One rebel held a pendulum and dowsed her way through life,
ignoring all the voices that demanding she obey the dictates of fear.
One rebel invented an important vaccine and didn’t patent it.
One rebel danced in supermarkets.
One rebel danced on graves.
One rebel made you feel like you are just fine as you are.
One rebel chalked “Eternity” onto sidewalks.
One rebel painted chewing gum blobs.
One rebel held your hand.
One rebel hugged an AIDS victim.
One rebel let you speak.
One rebel demanded to live for free on the planet she was born on.
One rebel published unredacted documents on the most powerful people in the world.
One rebel invented the internet and gave it to the people for free.
One rebel tore up a picture of the Pope.
One rebel left her abuser.
One rebel said “I believe you” when no one else would.
One rebel said “I saw that!” when everyone else was pretending they didn’t.
One rebel said “No, I won’t do that” and lost his job.
One rebel stood up and walked out of a board room meeting.
One rebel stopped feeling guilty for being born.
One rebel told his mom when the bad man touched him.
One rebel believed her son and went to war with the Church.
One rebel vandalized the anti-homeless device.
One rebel scribbled “Sorry” across the sky.
One rebel stopped feeling bad about the things he couldn’t control.
One rebel switched his TV off.
One rebel refused to hate the Russians.
One rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, and one rebel, formed a union and went on strike.
One rebel said “No” and she stopped the sentence there.
One rebel bought up land and gave it back to the jungle.
One rebel released all the secrets.
One rebel dissolved the patent system
and left the wealthy manipulators scrambling to come up with their own ideas.
One rebel discovered free energy and gave it to the world for free.
One rebel released the secret to self-regeneration and made the pharmaceutical industry redundant.
One rebel became truly happy in her own skin and became impossible to manipulate.
One rebel lost hope.
One rebel restored it.
The rebels shook the foundations in all different ways,
unexpected ways,
unrecognized ways,
unappreciated ways,
weird ways,
punished ways,
hated ways.
The rebels walked together over the horizon of our limitations
arm-in-arm into the wild unknown.
I can see all their faces.
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16 responses to “One Rebel”
One Rebel
was tied to the stake
looked up from the flames
to the pearly gate:
–
why has thee – forsaken me-?
–
we had lies, and asked for truth
we had beatings, and asked for justice
we had winter, and asked for blankets
we had prison, and asked for mercy
we had drought, and asked for water
we had famine, and asked for food
we had sickness, and asked for care
–
remember that me –> belongs to the we
–
then this from afar
like a blazing star:
that’s how thee knows
who we really are
“I do it because that is what everyone else does” and “Nobody does that!” These are our heaviest chains.
the patent system is dissolved? by whom and when?
Another keeper from Caity. This one would be great for reading on those mornings when we sometimes wake up in the morning with that “why bother” feeling.
Have a great weekend, Caity.
Thank you. It makes me appreciate my own small rebellions. I, so often, feel that I don’t do enough when our problems seem so insurmountable.
Thank you.
One Rebel
I quite liked that poem, recognized the characters. Wish there were more of us. Hope all of us hold the “No!” to the pain. Otherwise, we don’t get to be “arm in arm, into the sunset”, we will have gaps, as will our efforts.
It’s hard to teach people, and also teach them to say “no, that doesn’t compute, it isn’t right”. It’s far easier to manipulate them, then let them live.
Semper Fidelis,
John McClain
Vanceboro, NC
Thank you for this!! Sometimes we (meaning I) forget how important one act can be. A group of us rebels just “saved” a beautiful wild river in Arkansas from being destroyed by hog farms. As I wrote and/or called the legislators that were compiling laws to “protect the farmers”, I was unsure if my efforts would help. Your poem reminded me that all actions help! Thank you!!
I have been a rebel since early childhood. Thanks for celebrating all of us. We can’t live just on the energy of those constantly blaming us for everything.
Wow Caitlyn thanks again You enlarging my mind.
Ohhhh, you give me goosebumps!
Caitlin: You must be spent!! It was great. A grand march down a grand boulevard, with a magnificent marching band. Thousands of rebels singing to the heavens, while munching on oatmeal raisin cookies, and drinking the still fresh water from the Arctic. I loved it. Thanks for your constancy, energy and ever present good-will. Your style and words might appear to many as bitter, and mean spirited. I know better, and thanks again. tom golden
“In the task of that redemption the most effective agents will be men [and women] who have substituted some new illusions for the abandoned ones. The most important of these illusions is that the collective life of mankind can achieve perfect justice. It is a very valuable illusion for the moment; for justice cannot be approximated if the hope of its perfect realization does not generate a sublime madness in the soul. Nothing but such madness will do battle with the malignant
“The message of the rebel is disturbing because of the consequences of the truth he or she speaks…..To accept that nearly all forms of electronic communication are captured and stored by the government is to give up the illusion of freedom. The moral life, celebrated only in the afterglow of history and often not celebrated at all, is lonely, frightening, and hard… The rebel knows the odds. To defy radical evil does not mean to be irrational. It is to have a sober clarity about the power of evil and one’s insignificance and yet to rebel anyway. To face radical evil is to accept self-sacrifice.
Those with sublime madness accept the possibility of their own death as the price paid for defending life. This curious mixture of gloom and hope, of defiance and resignation, or absurdity and meaning, is born of the rebel’s awareness of the enormity of the forces that must be defeated and the remote chances for success. “Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism,” Havel wrote. “It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
People of all creeds and people of no creeds must make an absurd leap of faith to believe, despite all the empirical evidence around us, that the good draws to it the good…. and in these acts we make possible a better world, even if we cannot see one emerging around us.” Chris Hedges
Thanks KNACKERS. Your mind is full of truth and beauty.
Perfection…
Oh my God, how wonderful, how beautiful. Thanks for being here!