My friend (and great thinker, moving poet, inspirational character) Franklin Abbott shared this poem with me this week, and I share it with you in dark times.

Let’s all think seriously now about how we’ll Michaelangelo this world with a stronger arm and sharper chisel.

YOU CANNOT KILL ME
by Franklin Abbott

 

I am not only I

but a multiplicity of souls

I have always been here

I will always be back

I was your uncle, your 5th grade teacher, your cousin

I will be your grandson, your niece, the boy next door

you can erase my words

and a new Sappho, Rumi, Whitman, Stein, Lorca, Lorde

will emerge and write what I wrote

even more beautifully

you can shatter my statues

and a new Michaelangelo

with a sharper chisel and a stronger arm

will make grander statues

you can silence my singing

and a new Bessie Smith

will sound a bluer note

I have always been here

indivisible, essential

to the human spirit

firebird I am

feathered serpent

in every opposition

I am

the tender collapse

that always happens

before a song

rises up

to heaven

you see

I cannot die

you cannot

kill me