On This Day
by Najeeba Syeed-Miller

On this day,
I am done
With bloodletting
And blood writing.

The words etched upon the wall
Say this: Choose Life.

My body will not be an
Instrument
Of Anger of Rage of Destruction

I am simply the vessel for being
For believing
Across times
Against reason

That peace does begin with
The smallest action.
That the greatest resistance to oppression
Is my own defiance to let it
Rule my inner workings.

In my dreams these days
Pain upon pain
Is shed, creeping, the Muslim name
Of my own calls out to her
Chicana sisters, her Japanese brothers,
Her family of pain is painted
In red, so many of these stories
Unknown, unmothered, unfelt
But they are there, for those of us
Who listen, they are there,
Amongst us,
For those of us who care
There are in this room, with us
Sons torn from mothers
Children cut from parents
Fathers severed in their family limbs

The whisper of their pain is here,
Between the spaces of you and me.

In the night, the prophets of peace call me.

Martin: They will spit upon you, you must keep
your eyes open even as they do, defy them in your gaze

Malcolm: Sister, give your life to living, even as you
may lose it as I did, live without a thought of dying.

Cesar: This is the only hope, for joining together all
this pain, we walked and walked, you can do no less.

Suu Kyi: I am living Najeeba, these days, I will not
give my freedom up, though I stay shackled in my home,
a prison of pain.

I call to my prophet, Muhammad, across time.
Why must I choose life against death.
Yet I know his answer already…your jihad my child
is the one inside, the struggle to live with peace inside.
Let no one tell you different.

I say today, my brothers and sisters in their glory days did
Nothing more, nothing less than choose life.
Stand today with me and say,
We choose life.
We choose life.
Louder,
We choose life.


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Updated: 4/22/04