JUDITH, YOU WROTE,

"I COULD WALK OUT INTO THE WORLD

LIKE GAUTAMA

AND ENCOUNTER DEATH, DISEASE & OLD AGE,

AND DECIDE TO SAVE THE WORLD,"

and you saved it. Standing naked on the stage with arms

stretched like a star you shouted out your conquered fear and

bravery: "Poetry is politics." You created an antipolitics

verifying the Shelleys,

so much like you and Julian

with your white-shouldered trembling soul.

​

Your actions shape the energy

for a revolution of peace and brave action.

​

You are the dark bird in a golden Surf

of lovers — an osprey with scarlet beak

in the surge of body philosophers

you helped to free. You and the Living Theatre

turn many from the prisoning walls of dead horses.

Away from grim outrages

of Tienanmen, Gallipoli, and Feluja,

into bodies of awakened meat-spirit

to be revolutionaries and actors in the street.

They cry out and march against

the wars of cybernetic armaments, murdering suicides

and suiciding murderers.

​

Now we outnumber those who hate imagination, 

and whose poison is for inspiration.

​

PEOPLE ARE AWAKENED!

​

What you do stands us beside Kropotkin and Goldman,

with di Prima, Chez.

You have unleashed

the radiance of the loving,

deep mammal spirit of women and men,

alchemized it;

and let it be active light and the sparkling and laughing

rage of genius.

Your art and your directing have breathed shapeliness,

created a breathing,

which has seen

paradise now in the streets by the millions

​

You wrote: "Regard the tip of your forefinger,

pointing it toward your eyes."

​

See that you are innocent and free

to act and cry out in the cities and theaters.

​

For seventy years the Living Theatre has brought

a revolution

nearer for all

no other gestural social action has pointed as far

NOR LASTED AS LONG.

Would the Occupy Movement have happened without

your energy and your struggle for social change

and out-roar in the citites?

Children may not know

the names of their grandparents.

​

For three generations and ongoing,

theater dust has churned on stages and main streets.

Artaud knew that theater will be brought alive

AS AN ORGANISM

TO BREATHE AND PROCREATE.

​

Memories of resistance actions and for social change

are obliterated by the state

whether Stalin's state or North America's or Mao's state.

How often Judith, have you performed

inside jails and prisons

in factories, in court houses, and embassies?

How many times were you and the troupe busted and jailed?

Forced out and driven from cities and countries.

Your Living Theatre has created more than a hundred plays

from The Brig to The Money Tower, 

to Antigone, and Frankenstein.

​

YOUR

OWN

WILD TRIBE

of children, parents, and elders!

​

And more being born

who will wake from entertainments

and nodding-off of this decade

to become your multi-hued lovers and your children.