âEtiquette Leash I want a good heart I want it to be made of good stuff I want the stain glass window builder to be my drinking buddy I want to drink only the punch of a million gender queer school kids taking free martial arts lessons to survive recess I stopped calling myself a pacifist when I heard Gandhi told women they should not physically fight off their rapists I believe there is such a thing as a non violent fist I believe the earth is a woman muzzled, beaten, tied to the cold slinging tracks I believe the muzzled have every right to rip off the Bible Belt and take it to the patriarchyâs ass I know these words are going to get me in trouble It is never polite to throw back the tear gas Just like its never polite to bring enough life rafts They crowd the balconies where the wealthy shine their jewels But sometimes love Sometimes real love Is fucking rude Is interrupting a wedding mid vow just as the congregation is about to cry To stand up in your pew to say âis everyone here clear on how diamonds are mined?â Hallelujah to every drag queen at Stonewall who made weapons out of her stiletto shoes Hallelujah to the blues keeping the neighborhood awake To the activist standing in the snow outside of the circus holding a ten foot photograph of a baby elephant in chains when itâs probably some little kidâs birthday Hallelujah to making everyone uncomfortable To the terrible manners of truth To refusing to clean the blood off the plate Bend this spine into a bow I can pull across the cello of my speak up Love readies its heartâs teeth Chews through the etiquette lease Takes down the cellphone tower after millions of people die in wars in the Congo fighting for the minerals that make our cellphones Love blows up the dam Chains itself to the redwood tree To the capital building when a trailer of Mexican immigrants are found dead on the south Texas roadside Love insists well intentioned white people officially stop calling themselves color blind Insists hope lace itâs fucking boots Always calls out the misogynist, racist, homophobic joke refuses to be a welcome mat where hate wipes its feet Love asks questions at the most inappropriate times Overturns the defense of marriage act then walks a pride parade asking when the plight of poor single mothers will ignite our hearts into action like that Love is not polite deadlocks our rush hour traffic with a hundred stubborn screaming bikes Hallelujah to every suffrage movement hunger strike Hallelujah to insisting they get your pronouns right Hallelujah to tact never winning our spines To taking our power all the way back to that first glacier that had to learn how to swim To not turning our heads from a single ugly truth To knowing we live in a time when beauty recruits its models outside the doors of eating disorder clients That is not a metaphor This is not a line to a poem An Indian farmer walks into a crowd of people and stab himself in his chest to protest the poisoning of his land A Buddhist monk burns himself alive on the streets of Saigon A US soldier hangs himself wearing his enemyâs dog tags around his holy neck May my heart be as heavy as a tuba in the front row of the Mardi Gras parade five months after Katrina May it weigh the weight of the world so it might anchor the sun so it might hold me to my own light till I am willing to sweat as much as I cry Till I am willing to press into the clay of our precious lives A window Might our grace riot the walls down May the drought howl us awake May we rush into the streets to do the work of opening each otherâs eyes May our good hearts forever be too loud to let the neighbors sleepâ
â Andrea Gibson âEtiquette Leashâ
