Moon Bereft
Marilyn Buck
Beyond razor-wired walls
the moon shimmers in the late summer sky
spills over in pale brightness
to draw me into its fullness
washing my eyes in quicksilver
Now, in a heavy-lidded cell
moon-bereft nights leave me weeping
tears well up in dry cratered wounds
despair rises
dark and irradiated
to swallow starlight
and spit it out
like steel needles
that incite my loneliness
My soul careens off cell walls
wails till pain tires
and the pale moon of memory
appears to call me home
Marilyn Buck was an Anti-Imperialist
political prisoner, who spent 25 years in prison for her anti-imperialist actions carried
out in support of national liberation, women's liberation, social and economic
justice. In 1985 she was captured and and faced 4 separate
court trials. She was charged with conspiracy to support and free PP/POWs
and to support the New Afrikan Independence struggle through expropriations.
In 1988 she was indicted for conspiracy to protest and alter government policies
through use of violence against government and military buildings and received
an additional 10 years for conspiracy to bomb the Capitol. While in prison she developed uterine cancer, which resisted treatment. Seriously ill, she was released on July 15, 2010. She died a couple of weeks later, on August 3.
This poem is also read by homeless/poor
people's activist and poet Sarah Menefee on Marilyn's poetry CD Wild Poppies , produced in 2004 by Freedom Archives and available from leftwingbooks.net - click here for more details.
