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This Performance Tonight
		This performance tonight is devoted To those exact persons  Who will die during this moment And those who find out their time Is up during the moment And the numbers have come out Against them for keeps Some are taken without warning This performance is devoted to Everyone who is dying with injustice tonight In this moment Everyone who is losing her or his life Right now By some political miscalculation Which has judged her or him To be expendable For the greater good That has been calculated Invisibly Non-intelligibly And in heartless abstraction Tonight this work is devoted to All whose existence is hated Just because she or he exists Not as a person not as having any Truths or any worth as an individual Just hated just because Without cause In advance And irrevocably And for those who are dying Tonight duped By a lie any lie That serves a cause This performance tonight Is devoted to all who are in prisons Of forgottenness In prisons of ancient brutalities Descending through generations Of the greater power Defeating the lesser power Because it can Because they can Those who do this Do this And get away with it And are getting away with it In this moment Over the face of the Earth This performance is for the Imprisoned and the forgotten And the unknown This performance tonight is For the abused being among us Right now in this room And for all the injured children Of destroyed hopes and innocence For whom there is no explanation No prayer-response that clarifies Impossible dreams of freedom This is for everyone and everything That is lost For all who suffer more than they can comprehend And accept the choice of no choice But acceptance This is a performance of acceptance Of the unacceptable The loss of all loss In this very hour Anywhere Of any being At any scale And all beings At all scales Of life’s magnitudes As speaking this Is spoken tonight For those who cannot speak Who are not allowed to speak For those who cannot speak Even if allowed to speak For those who cannot move Even if able to move For those losing their lives tonight By not finding them May this performance be Expansive enough For one instant Of not-forgotten-ness By us who hear And see and move And are here Devoted to this That we are This doing Here __________________________________________________ Welcome to poetryvlog.com A weekly video reading of poetry by the poet. John Dotson was the first poet-in-residence of the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation in Carmel, California. His book portraying that experience is The Enduring Voice, A Tor House Journal. John has published poetry and prose internationally. He also works in many art forms, media, and performance. In the fall of 2007, his play WITHOUT WHY will be staged at the Carl Cherry Center for the Arts in Carmel. John has also worked as an educator in many settings in California and elsewhere. See John Dotson’s sculpture, poems, graphics, andevents at: http://www.acharantos.com P. O. Box 159 Carmel, CA 93921

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