On Behalf of the Uyghurs
by Michael Doyle

Give me the whole of your sentence 
And I will still my will and serve
Give me the entirety of your pretense
Tell me what it is that I deserve

And I will still write my poetry
Never surrendering an ounce of integrity
It is a vital part of the best of life
It is the truth of peace within strife

Suppress our language and our culture
Still we will fight to grow and nurture
You may choose to call this stubborn pride
While you deify your satanic genocide

These are the thoughts that honor Gulnisa Imin
These are the thoughts every poet should defend
You may degrade us and say we call for separatism
Submitting us to "reeducation" for our patriotism

But every poet of conscience takes up this banner
In face of your starkness regardless of your manner
The birds cannot sing freely where words cannot be said
Still it is better to live freely than to live dead

Dead to our freedoms where flowers will not blossom
And words of yearning, are burning inside the bosom
Never dared whispered over the course of a thousand nights
And more one more given on behalf of a people's rights

Human contact cut off for fear of harming any others
WeChat snippets shared among the freest with one another
Others still only committing verses to their memory
In hopes of sharing freedom's plea with the outside family

A family of love and extended among those who have courage
Enough to defy tyranny and brave enough to encourage
A tribe of poets, part of this human being's family
Followed in spirit to spread and follow as a living legacy

On moonless nights, skies fill with familiar voice
Searching for stars, never alone, joined in voice
Frosted hope dances in the distance of wilderness
Where strength is made stronger through tenderness

There in the strokes of penmanship until lost and gone
Worried regret whisper no tales of that magic once upon
Wilted flowers like fire in throat cried into the nothing
That dares to stand for the life of a people's everything

When I think of you, I become lost in endless grief
Wishing your memory would not fade away without relief
The stars are there to always remind us of childhood's end
But always will linger the shared thoughts that make us friends

(c) July 16, 2022  Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved