Making History
written by: Francisco Bravo Cabrera
The city is a fishbowl…
And we swim through streets
of dirty water that flows through bars, churches and schools.
They whet my appetite…
They wet my shoes and rip open the skin that covers my body,
remove my lungs and,
put in their place gills so oxygen can flow…
Strange fish I see around familiar places,
where walls are made of Merthiolate and gauze,
and whispers form the wrinkles
in the faces of fish, crustaceans, sea plants, and saints,
that managed to deface altars and temples
with wild graffiti tags in colours bold.
How can they brave these waters now so cold…
To climb out of the fishbowl you need courage,
a hand, most likely someone must provide,
a rifle and a heart that’s hard, yet tender,
disposed to create something new from something worn, useless,
ingeniously corrupt…
To jump out of the fishbowl you need impulse,
velocity gained from all those years when dreams composed
the script that fits your character so perfect,
the background music, improvised as new, yet taken from a pepper that’s quite old.
To make history you need to breathe through nostrils
as gills aren’t sufficient, I am told.
You must have arms and legs and one obsession,
like a hunting dog that never lets prey go,
you hang on to each step, to each intention
until you rise above the water,
until you see the pirate ship that sails towards heaven,
and hitch a ride and breathe pure bliss…
To make history you need to look much further,
than the nose that God has placed upon your face,
you need to ambush ire, calm and hatred,
to leave others behind and win the race…
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
“Making History” is a poem about liberation… The personal kind… Cities to me have always resembled fishbowls for some strange reason I’ve yet not dissected or inspected. The fish are the ones that live because they breathe but the ones who raise themselves, either with a helping hand or simply gather enough momentum to jump out, those are the ones that we need to create a better world. So in conclusion, this is a poem of hope. I began writing this poem on the 26th of June, 2023, the day of my Grandmother’s birthday, (she would have been 123 years old), and finished it on the 29th day of June, 2023 in my city of Valencia, Spain.
I am from Valencia, Spain.
- No te Olvides de Mi - June 23, 2024
- Making History - March 27, 2024
- On a Windy, Dark Night - November 1, 2023
