“Among the Honored Dead”
Kerry said,
“I wish I could be buried here
Among the honored dead.”
“I wish I could be buried here
Among the honored dead.”
Kerry and I have feelings that we don’t understand.
We are a starving child driven out of Ireland.
We are the woman being lynched from an apple tree.
We’re the girl in the attic ‘til they find her and me.
We’re the lesbian, her head bashed into a Stonewall.
We’re the forgotten lunatic they dumped here one fall.
We are a starving child driven out of Ireland.
We are the woman being lynched from an apple tree.
We’re the girl in the attic ‘til they find her and me.
We’re the lesbian, her head bashed into a Stonewall.
We’re the forgotten lunatic they dumped here one fall.
There‘s a word they use for her and me.
What is it again? Oh yes…crazy.
I think that means we care too much
For others in torment.
We feel their pain like it is our own.
What is it again? Oh yes…crazy.
I think that means we care too much
For others in torment.
We feel their pain like it is our own.
These are the forgotten heroes
I have met them all
In the battles
In my head.
I wish I could be buried here
Among the honored dead.
I have met them all
In the battles
In my head.
I wish I could be buried here
Among the honored dead.
Kerry and I had visited the Rochester State Hospital cemetery in Minnesota about three years ago. Since then I have struggle to make vivid the over whelming feelings of rage and sadness at what we both felt that day. She really did say, “I wish I could be buried here, among the honored dead.”
I knew just what she meant but it always sounds like the beginning of a fight when I feel that the struggle of the mentally ill is a struggle I have seen before in so many other faces in so many other times. I understand that if I were to give the power sign to a lesbian and call her my “sister” she might just look at me like I was crazy. (She would be right of course, but we don’t like that word.)
I do feel like I am her sister. I feel a kinship with others who have had to struggle for civil rights. I understand if anyone feels the plight of my people shouldn’t be linked with the plight of their people. But I don’t see them as separate struggles -- but one struggle for human dignity. As long is someone is considered human garbage fit for unmarked burial in a pit, I think the battle is hardly begun for any of us. One doesn’t have to travel to a land far away or long ago. Just take a walk around your own town. Hate and misunderstanding of someone different from the mainstream is never far away.
“Among the Honored Dead” ©Plushpark 2013
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