POEMS FOR THE REVOLUTION
Dandelion Scribes presents a selection of 26 POEMS FOR THE REVOLUTION by 16 revolutionary poets. This brave & beautiful multitude of voices is united in our collective battle cry, harmonized in our shared quest to forge a future defined by freedom, justice, and radical love. We advocate for the liberation of all people—from mind to body to spirit and beyond. And we are strengthened by each other’s courage to name our experiences, embody empathy, and cast a critical eye upon the corruption we witness in our world. As scribes, words are our superpower. We are here, and we are not holding back!
The poems included below tell a communal story. From beginning to end, we have created a narrative about summoning the strength to face our present reality—from the deeply personal to the global to the universal—and, as Olivia Gilreath says in the inaugural poem, to rise, a blossoming force, empowered, together, as one. Each author’s words exist in conversation with everything that comes before and after. Read on and allow yourself to be inspired by the fire & fearlessness of the following poets:
Olivia Gilreath
Frances Denise, @francesdenisepoetry
Lyn Patterson, @poetryntings
Dane Osborne, @daneosborne.85
Stephani Duff, @_stephduff
Hannah Nelson
Cheyanne Leonardo, @dithyrambler
Morgan Long, @moe___lo
Stella Van Buskirk, @poet_svb
Cari Lynne King, @inkstainedmemoirs
Jade Foster
Casey Lynn, @ladyleopoetry
Amber Sparks, @asparkspoetry
Kristen Reid, @writerkristenreid
*S. Lee
ANONYMOUS
WHISPERS OF THE WIND
The wind whispers through ancient trees,
Carrying wisdom from lands unseen.
Nature's breath, a sacred breeze,
Inviting us to worlds serene.
Beneath the canopy's emerald embrace,
We find solace in her nurturing grace.
The earth beneath our feet reminds us,
Of the oneness binding all humankind
In this sanctuary, we're unbounded, free,
To shed the shackles that tether and constrain.
United by a spiritual harmony,
Our souls awakened, our spirits unchained.
As one we rise, a blossoming force,
Fueled by nature's eternal source.
In collective liberation, we're empowered,
To shape a world where justice is flowered.
–Olivia Gilreath
⚘
HORIZON
She does not shine with full light
This role she leaves to the sun
Day after day
She tastes the air and responds softly
Collecting water
Planting seeds, a careful yet generous offer
She blesses the chaos in the brambles
The divinity in the vines
That climb and entwine
She reads
The greedy growth that chokes out light
She is brave and she can be
Because she holds the map to the shore
Her heart is wild–
Wild for love, wild for change
With grace, she presses gently
Tightly,
Freely
At the right moments, in the right places
Breathing with the pulse
Watching bubbles in the river
With steady eyes
She gives her voice to the ever-growing rumble
The entrancing rage beneath the ocean
A million nights of preparation,
In anticipation
Of when the sun rises with a new tone
And calls her to hold hands with the others
For the quintessential washing over
Untangled hopes float, dreams birthed
Our visions locked forward
Never looking back
Not even fondly
–Frances Denise
⚘
THE PURGE
shells for ancestors/ because my
grandmother always taught me how
profound it was to put your ear to the
ocean/ how to find joy in realizing
how small we truly are/
stones for presence/ because
becoming unburdened is heavy/ and
it requires the weight of our stillness/
glass for breaking/ because once
something is broken it can never be
put back together but the mourning
of what was lost will remain rage
ready to gut you from the inside out
if you don’t release it
friends to scream at the ocean
alongside you/ because even though
you are a fortress built from glass
and stones/ you can still be knocked
down by the crashing wave of
darkness/ if you try to suffer through
this alone
blessings and offerings for the
season/ may this fresh start be the
brightest of summer mornings/
it can be so hard to see beauty
when things are broken/
but without destruction there is no
room for rebuilding here.
–Lyn Patterson
⚘
EXPRESSION
Who am I but a fool of nature
Who creates his own failure in futile sacrifice
For the name of meaning?
Language itself is failure
As what is described can never be the description.
I am a sentient mutation of humanity who stands capable
Of ever brief fast moments of successful telepathy
And my only gift be the words I spell
To justify the secrets of my astrology.
We interpret wide awake and dream asleep
And the wrong interpretation kills the dream.
One must master the balance between action and being cautious.
My reality inside my head is what's real and not real.
I cannot tell the difference anymore.
(Real And Not Real)
–Dane Osborne
⚘
WHEN DID WE FORGET?
A woman thanked me for not yelling at her today on the phone. I hung up and sighed heavily–
the weight of collective brokenness lines my gut, threatens to choke airways.
Kindness should be the standard, not a cause for accolades and gratitude.
Once, I read a story about a husband and wife. Everyday, they went out separately. One was kind to everyone they encountered, the other, cruel. Then the next day, they switched. That was their life.
I think about that story often, about the pain that must puddle in organs and vine around veins, in order for malice to be considered an appropriate offering.
Did they ever feel bad?
Everywhere I look, Eyes on Rafah, and I feel the bony hands of evil clutch the fraying fabric of a world never actually designed for this level of destruction and horrific loss.
And a stranger on the telephone thanks me for my human decency, while part of the world is aflame with bombings and injustice.
Maybe I shoulda said I love you before embarrassingly ending the call…
I could’ve asked her how she was and truly listened…
Perhaps I should have told her she’s worthy and seen…
When did we forget we’re all walking each other home?
–Stephani Duff
⚘
WHAT IF?
What if they told me my son deserved to lose his head because I wore a hijab on mine?
What if the umbrella of safety presented to me became a blanket of fire and ash? I would accept it knowing this, but when at the mercy of madmen, what other choice would I have?
What if the sounds of the waves on the sand or the wind in the trees were permanently replaced with screams of agony and death in my mind?
What if the pain outside and the pain inside were in such a fierce war that I forgot what peace felt like?
What if my whole world was destroyed because history was always doomed to repeat itself, yet the heroes decided not to show up in my story?
Could I go on?
Could I find any scrap of hope or happiness left to cling to?
I’m afraid I could not.
Yet they are.
The mothers, fathers, friends... the human beings living in this hell. They dare to hope.
And I am here crippled simply by the thought of the agony that they are living in every day.
Let me be more like them.
No. Let no one ever have to be like them again.
Let hope replace hate.
Let peace replace pain.
Let courage replace complicity.
Let humanity overcome our hatred and greed.
Let Palestine be freed.
–Hannah Nelson
⚘
RELIGION
“Where is God in war? God is under the rubble.”
–Munther Isaac
religion
is never accessible when one is asked
to crawl on hands and knees
through twisted tunnels of guilt and shame –
this corruption of the name
is strictly – meticulously –
m a n m a d e.
they say you have yourself to blame
when your devotion
is open
rather than rigid – resting
on the notion
that they are right
no matter the sight
of destruction and
devastation –
achieved by shrouding life in darkness
and burying love
alive.
religion is revolt! when grace is gasping
for breath – when god is under the rubble
feeling through all those many bodies
the backbreaking weight
of doctrine
and dogma
and delusion.
“death to freedom!” scream the devil-worshippers
cloaked in stars and stripes – snaking
into circles that grant them power and praise.
they claim god himself would have dropped
those bombs so the chosen ones may build
their shrines atop our children’s graves.
what more is there to say? when they
are why we lose our faith – when they whitewash
the holy face – when they lay claim to sacred
space and infiltrate the place –
where the savior
was humbly
born.
then try to justify a war
against their own commandments, against
the fertile planet
given
like a garden
for us to nurture
and defend.
don’t you remember?
LOVE THY NEIGHBOR
is the law
of all
the land.
–Cheyanne Leonardo
⚘
The pressure is building, intensifying, something’s rattling and the noise is driving me insane.
Outside the people are shouting, demanding change, begging for a revolution.
We’ve lost the hourglass but time still ticks away. We don’t know how much sand has filled the bottom and cannot fathom how few grains are left above.
Our seas are rising, our lands burning.
Our people are dying and pointing blame at everyone else.
People are spreading misinformation like it’s biblical verse, like it will absolve them of blame, alleviate the burden of burning alive on this plane of existence.
And I sit here, on the inside, watching.
Listening.
Weeping.
Inside I am shouting, begging for change but I can’t raise my voice above the hypocrisy.
“How do we know what to believe anymore?” someone asks.
An epistemological crisis cannot be resolved over coffee but I want to ask them to sit at my table anyways.
How have you forgotten how to know? How have you forgotten how to care?
The pressure is building, intensifying, the rattling is louder, nearer.
No amount of pressure can alchemize empathy out of indifference.
–Morgan Long
⚘
WINTER
hemingway says to write one true sentence—
you have written before and will write again
there are red tomatoes in my dad’s garden.
green tomatoes too and peppers and marigolds
i am always sick on big occasions—
the cruise ship, mexico, my birthday, my sister’s birthday
i don’t kill spiders. and it hurts to hear when people do
when i was younger
i imagined what i would be like as a 15, 16, 17 year-old
my older self felt impossible
but
women are burning their hijabs and cutting their hair after mahsa amini
was beaten to death by iran’s “morality” police
she was 22
the weather is nice today
and i am lucky to be able to talk about the weather while
protesters chant:
death to the dictator
death to the dictator
death to the dictator
i broke my finger yesterday.
big and blue like a headline:
Young Iranian Protesters Have Nothing Left to Lose
i have more compassion for some people than i do for others
a man is serving a 16-year prison sentence for selling
an ounce of weed
my friend says she wants to be a marine biologist or an fbi agent
but police were created to terrorize
sarina. nika. hadis
(women. life. freedom)
even the money is striking
all your life there will be moments like these.
not sin but civil
disobedience
a cop shot a boy who was eating McDonald's in his car.
and i am grateful for every year i get older
there are red tomatoes in my dad's garden
but
i know
and hemingway knows
and you know
the cold season is dawning,
fat,
tubercular,
and true
–Stella Van Buskirk
⚘
ALL THESE BROKEN MACHINES
I am already gone from this aqua blue spinning orb
That revolves around a star.
You can always see me and I talk and see.
But I am not really here.
My heart only beats in a dream.
In these dreams the sky is always yellow with purple streaks
Of translucent light and language has no clever tricks
And I always see people who say they know me
And My soul but I don’t remember them.
I am not really here....my heart does not belong here
Among all these broken machines.
–Dane Osborne
⚘
I SEE HOW BIG YOU LOVE
I just want you to know
That I see you
I see how hard you try
I see the wars you are fighting
I see how this mad world frustrates you
And yet you keep on loving it all the same
I see how so many things have hurt you
How you struggle with fear, guilt and shame
I see how sometimes you tend to
Hold the whole world on your shoulders
I see your heart breaking for things that were
For things that still are
I see your heart reaching, aching
For that dream that you see
Every time you close your eyes
For that song that follows you into your waking hours
You could swear the birds are in on it too
Singing it back to you
I see how tightly you hold on to hope when you find it
To joy, to peace, to love, when you touch it
I want you to know–
I see you.
I see how big you love.
–Frances Denise
⚘
THE TEMPEST RAGES
Thunder
Echoes with every footfall
These thighs
Keep me from standing tall
Lumps and bumps
Wiggle and jiggle
Who knew someone so soft
Would be so hard to love
I stay hidden in the shadows
While people call me a light
They call me confident
They call me brave
They say I'm an inspiration
But I'm just me
I am a fat woman
Simply existing
Why am I a light
Why am I confident
Why am I brave
Why am I an inspiration
For simply existing
People act like it's a sin
To love this skin I'm living in
My body taking up space
Will surely harm my neighbor
The gym is a church
Go confess and pay penance
Turn from the wicked ways
Of existing in imperfection
I'd be so much prettier
If I'd just be baptized
My body is controversial
It is fetishized and criticized
Sometimes by the same eyes
I've been fed lies
While they analyze
My ideal size
I've tried so many ways to disguise
The parts of me I despise
Praying someone might think I'm a prize
But I am a storm
Born of instability
The lightning in my eyes
Far stronger than the
Thunder
Of my thighs
I'll quench the thirst
Of the weak and dying
Or I can strike them down
Without even trying
I will not be made small
For simply being too large
I will rise above
Show the world what's below
This delicate skin
That hides the powerful storm
Brewing inside
–Cari Lynne King
⚘
I was driving to my 9 to 5 when
It hit me that my skin did not feel like mine
It was stretched thin as paper
And scorched beneath that Tennessee heat
Blistered in the name of love.
A butterfly cannot be born unless it
Steals the breath of a caterpillar
Takes a cocoon and shatters it
Like glass
Rips apart the fabric of life
And drinks its very essence.
I have outgrown this life
And these bones
And this town
And this home.
What must the sky be like
Above the clouds?
–Jade Foster
⚘
EPIPHANY OF THE SKYBORN
You create the nourishment
For your own good and evil
Inside your pulsating heart
And that is where white doves go
To die in peace.
Do you even know what I'm saying?
You are a Phoenix who burns itself
But your 500 years is so desperately needed
To enhance the sentience of
People who live alone in the dark.
A monstrosity of energy.
Something understood only by
The very young and very old.
An epiphany for the skyborn trapped
On the Earth.
–Dane Osborne
⚘
The sun has cracked between your
breast bone & I am nothing but a
Sunday horizon broken in half,
leaking into your orbit like
Orion’s Belt throwing her arms
around Sirius. I am simply a
crescent against your wide canvas,
while you carve moons out of my
thighs. I pull your nagging
sweatshirt string & a symphony
unravels around my waist & I feel
everything but the strength to
leave. I pull rivers from your
spine & the room won’t stop
flooding.
–Casey Lynn
⚘
We are the daughters
of the witches
you could not burn.
We are women who
extinguish torches
with touches
& dismantle funeral pyres.
We have spun gold
from ropes meant
to asphyxiate
to silence our voice.
We have built a foundation
from the stones meant
to crush us
to weigh us down.
You cannot fill lungs
so full of screams
with water & you will
never
drown us out.
–Amber Sparks
⚘
IN PRAISE OF MY LIPS
“What that mouth do"
I think is what the kids say
But these lips have talked more shit
and made more eyes roll back
than they could understand
I have painted them
a great many colors
From my signature red
to a glittering purple–
I make an impression meant to linger
They have kissed new life
and said my first “I love you"
Only to tell loved ones
It's ok to go
and whispered my last
My lips are learning
to speak my truth
to loudly make my presence known
that they have more power
than we've ever harnessed
–Cari Lynne King
⚘
My inability to create life
does not diminish my
capability to destroy it.
Nuclear families are
nonexistent for me
so I nurtured knowledge
of nuclear chemistry.
Atomic words are my specialty.
Men like you THINK
with spewing religious hate
you can totally annihilate
the million other qualities
that make women so great.
Yet, you wonder why
Eve chose the snake?
Women like me KNOW
that when you finally face
the Creator of your fate,
She will look you in the eyes
bite the forbidden fruit once more
& quickly lock Heaven’s gate.
–Amber Sparks
⚘
WAR
my old boss calls it “business”
and i call bullshit.
while i watch our world treat war
like a goddamn spectator sport
the high and mighty
invest their money
just to profit handsomely –
collect their dividends from death,
tell two lies in the same breath
and blame the ones that they oppress
for the fact that freedom
is nowhere to be found
as they drop their bombs from planes
and boots trample the ground.
i’d like to ask, dear reader –
please, riddle me this:
if they believe the land is holy
why are they burning it?
they invoke the name of god
then try to write love out
as if our emerald earth were ever
lesser than her house!
they say possession is their birthright
and so they kill to claim
the country and the crucifix
where the son himself was slain
by men whose pulpit politics
usurped the people’s faith –
a fortune made from selling out
and spitting in god’s face!
“wake up world!” the children scream
“before they kill us all!”
we stand and cheer for sacrifice
and watch the martyrs fall.
–Cheyanne Leonardo
⚘
THE MET’S GALL
“Let them eat cake,”
once shouted from a palace
to screens—broadcasted malice—
to you, to me, to a
collective we.
We ask, “What is cake?”
We know only sore bones from gathering wheat—
no milk or sugar sweet
for us to eat.
Your perfect polished fingers linger
over our labor as a flippant treat
to discard despite how hard we bleed
for your ruby-colored gowns—
red stain maintaining your empire.
Though they no longer sport crowns,
we still see them atop their brows.
“Let them eat cake.”
And bombs fall.
“Let them eat cake.”
And children crawl
over brick and mortar fallout.
“Let them eat cake.”
And innocence is slaughtered to feed greed.
For this “charity” means your serenity
found in fluffy frosted clotted cream.
–Kristen Reid
⚘
DECADENCE
i no longer fit
in the hip
part of town.
under the bridge
i live – burned down –
requesting a coin
in exchange for the word
we all forgot
when no one heard
the trill of the trumpet
singing the name
hallowed and holy and
who was to blame?
for a bond so barren
and a wound so deep –
give them goods but keep
them cheap! for one to produce
while the other buys: “the cost
requires we sell some lies!”
contrive a disguise!
obscure what’s true!
success is the art
of how to construe
the facts in your favor
then make up the rest.
invent a great farce!
bad faith does it best!
believe your own fiction!
beguile yourself!
your compass collects
cobwebs on a shelf
where morals are mingled
with rot and decay –
d e c a d e n c e
drives the fading away,
falling short of the glory
and far from the tree
god grew from the ground
we once walked – free –
–Cheyanne Leonardo
⚘
dragons in chains
amidst bone and ashes
falsely accused
of burning the masses
bearing the torment,
accepting their plight,
for no one believed the
match was lit by a knight.
–Amber Sparks
⚘
Write your rage
with blood that
will drip from
within…
As the country that I
stand for
falls with the wind.
Blast your astonishment
at what has become
of your life’s
balance.
–*S. Lee
⚘
Bullets strike, ripping the heart out of our
nation
Testing our
patience
How long must we
wait
Seeing what is at
stake
Until sanity
re-enters
The minds of our
leaders
not the one at the top
like you insist
But the ones who keep progress
at bay
Continuing to block the very
way
That can stop the willful
shattering
of our collective
souls
School desks clattered
Parents shattered
Along with the dreams of the
children
Traumatized by the minority
who refuse to see
what is obvious
Real & unreal look similar
to the
BRAINWASHED
We must see the difference
–ANONYMOUS
⚘
06/24/22
good morning, america. we’re screwed. wake up to find out that you’re unloved. most days don’t live in infamy, but this one will. this one will kill like a mockingbird. this one made four people on a rooftop quiet. mourn the fourth of july with us. mourn the women and the children. we’ll rest our feet in the genesis of this hate. it’s not our fault. it’s not our fault we’re angry. how can there be a hero at a time like this? there are fireworks in the distance, but we can’t see what doesn’t exist for us. what is independence day to a woman? what is it to those shot dead? hear a bell toll for every ex-freedom. scratch your name someplace permanent before you can’t anymore. here we are. here we are. ankle deep in a mud so vicious. who will save us now?
–Stella Van Buskirk
⚘
ENIGMA OF THE MACHINE
White spaceship disappears
Into a universe which exists inside of you.
Do you have the key which can unlock the machine?
If you can unlock the machine
Then you can unleash electromagnetic waves
Which turn off our brains
And sends us back to the dimension of Heaven
Safe at last!
Did You Know That?
White spaceship disappears
Into another universe inside of you.
There exist a hundred different universes
Inside of you.
–Dane Osborne
Publication Notes
Poem The Purge by Lyn Patterson, originally published in her book The Postcards I Never Sent, 2024.
Poem The Tempest Rages by Cari Lynne King, originally published in Hometown Poems: A South Fork Country Anthology of Poetry, 2023.
𖤣.𖥧.𖡼.⚘
P.S. – If you find yourself inspired by the collective battle cry of these 16 revolutionary poets, we hope to hear from you! Add your voice to the impassioned menagerie, and submit your own poem for the revolution over on our submissions page!
With endless love & gratitude,
