Openly gay poet Richard Blanco has
released a poem titled One Pulse – One Poem dedicated to the
victims of the mass shooting in a gay nightclub in Orlando.
Forty-nine people died and dozens more
wounded when a gunman opened fire in the Pulse nightclub on Latino
night.
Blanco, who was born to a Cuban exile
family and raised in Miami, read at President Barack Obama's second
inauguration, making him the youngest inaugural poet.
One Pulse – One Poem, by
Richard Blanco.
Here, sit at my kitchen table, we need
to write this together. Take a sip of café con leche, breathe in the
steam and our courage to face this page, bare as our pain. Curl your
fingers around mine, curled around my pen, hold it like a talisman in
our hands shaking, eyes swollen. But let’s not start with tears, or
the flashing lights, the sirens, nor the faint voice over the cell
phone when you heard “I love you …” for the very last time. No,
let’s ease our way into this, let our first lines praise the
plenitude of morning, the sun exhaling light into the clouds. Let’s
imagine songbirds flocked at my window, hear them chirping a blessing
in Spanish: bendición-bendición-bendición.
Begin the next stanza with a constant
wind trembling every palm tree, yet steadying our minds just enough
to write out: bullets, bodies, death – the vocabulary of violence
raging in our minds, but still mute, choked in our throats. Leave
some white space for a moment of silence, then fill it with lines
repeating the rhythms pulsing through Pulse that night – salsa,
deep house, electro, merengue, and techno heartbeats mixed with
gunshots. Stop the echoes of that merciless music with a tender
simile to honor the blood of our blood, without writing blood. Use
warm words to describe the cold bodies of our husbands, lovers, and
wives, our sisters, brothers and friends. Draw a metaphor so we can
picture the choir of their invisible spirits rising with the smoke
toward disco lights, imagine ourselves dancing with them until the
very end.
Write one more stanza – now. Set the
page ablaze with the anger in the hollow ache of our bones – anger
for the new hate, same as the old kind of hate for the wrong skin
color, for the accent in a voice, for the love of those we’re not
supposed to love. Anger for the voice of politics armed with lies,
fear that holds democracy at gunpoint. But let’s not end here. Turn
the poem, find details for the love of the lives lost, still alive in
photos – spread them on the table, give us their wish-filled eyes
glowing over birthday candles, their unfinished sand castles, their
training-wheels, Mickey Mouse ears, tiaras. Show their blemished
yearbook faces, silver-teeth smiles and stiff prom poses, their
tasseled caps and gown, their first true loves. And then share their
very last selfies. Let’s place each memory like a star, the light
of their past reaching us now, and always, reminding us to keep
writing until we never need to write a poem like this again.