Rise And Rule (She Was Born In Honolulu)

She was born in Honolulu.
She was raised by the O–hi–o.
Her life was full of vile explosion . . . ever so.
She looked to god and posed a question: “What can I do with the cards I’m dealt?”
She looked hard and wild at god’s creations. “I can make a new way,” is
how she felt.
She yanked her dreams down from above her.
She looked a monster right in the eye.
Said my children won’t see me suffer, they’ll see me rise and rule before I die.
From scratch she carved a woman’s vision.
She was beat down again and again.
She used her hands, she used her troubles. God took her mind, god took her men. She lay confined for years in silence, unembraced by everyone.
Did she lose her faith?
I’m here to sing to you: She didn’t lose a thing, she passed it on.
She grew a garden, she drew a drawing.
She looked her shadow right in its eye.
She said my children won’t see me suffer, they’ll see me rise and rule before I die. Kids will play, kids will wander every day farther from home.
Hold us close, mother and father! Friends don’t leave our friends alone!
We roll in waves at Makapu’u while those afraid sit on the shore.
We roam the roads, we follow clues to where we’ve never been before.
We build a fire, scream at a star as the laughter rolls sweetly by.
Holes in our lives, and still we are going to rise and rule before we die.
When our body’s burned to cinder and our names are rarely said and I wonder do our friends ponder how we are, now we are dead.
Wounds are healed so forcefully and as we think of the deceased . . .
When we say thanks around our table, we skip their names with some relief . . .we skip their names
with some relief.
They melt away like heat and moon drops into a space in black beyond.
She comes in colors even there, and so she’ll rise and rule, now her burden’s gone.