RESIST

★ ★ ★ ★

Image by Ashling McKeever

By Emer Martin

What have we done?

We fear
a ludicrous man—
a liar
barking insults
deafening dreams,
his tiny heart squeezed dry,
a blind crafty rat stumbling a maze
of hate,
his empty eyes shining
with avarice.

What will happen now?

We have spent 300 years
yoked to their
industry, waving their
fake flags, murdering each other
for their markets and resources.
Until the earth can barely hold
onto us
anymore.

Resist!

Is there a choice?
We cannot keep marching
through the trauma of their
industrialization,
imperialism,
neo-colonialism.
Corporations crowned as nations.
We can no longer lie in their
trenches, clutching their
weapons, buying their
crap, hating our-
selves,
fighting each other.

Resist!

To thrive
To survive
To exist

Resist!

The old earth
is hot flashing
messages of truth,
with hurricane breath
and glacial tears
raising the oceans.
We took too much from her.
Then gave it
to so few.

Resist

the deceiver in the penthouse suite:
We can topple him
with the truth.
For we have been loved
by life.
And we
have loved
those born outside
their walls, in the shadows
of their towers.

Resist

this thug and his grotesque parade
of devouring henchmen.

Resist

and chase them out of history,
For they do not know
how much we can love each other.
They cannot imagine
how we feel the earth
speaking from inside us.
They cannot fathom
how much we learn
from the streets.

Those who rule us
do not know our love.

But they will feel the full force of it now.

Emer Martin is an Irish novelist, painter and filmmaker who has also lived in Paris, London, the Middle East, and the United States. Her first novel, Breakfast in Babylon won Book of the Year at the 1996 Listowel Writers’ Week. More Bread Or I’ll Appear, her second novel, was published internationally in 1999. Baby Zero was published in March 2007 and released internationally through the publishing co-operative Rawmeash based in the Bay Area California. Why is the Moon following Me? is her first children’s book.

She studied painting in New York and graduated from the Thomas Hunter Honors Program of Hunter College as class valedictorian in January 1998. She had two sell-out solo shows of her paintings at the Origin Gallery in Harcourt St, Dublin. She recently completed her third short film Unaccompanied. She produced Irvine Welsh’s directorial debut NUTS in 2007. She was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000. Her new children’s book The Pooka will be released this Halloween 2016. Her fourth novel The Cruelty Men will be released in Ireland and the UK in 2017.  She now lives in Palo Alto, California.