Be Woke, My Friends

Poetry & Prose by Britt Wolfe

They have dressed the word in rags
and paraded it as ruin.
They have spit it from their mouths like ash,
as though compassion were contagion,
as though justice were disease.

But “woke” was never their invention.
It is the language of vigilance,
the prayer of eyes unshuttered,
the practice of seeing what power demands we ignore.
It is the hand that reaches for another
when cruelty would rather you look away.
It is the promise that no life is expendable,
no voice disposable,
no soul beyond the circle of concern.

To be woke is to know
that freedom without equity is a throne on quicksand,
that peace without justice is only silence rehearsed,
that love without courage
is nothing but a pretty word trembling in the dark.

So they call it madness.
Because kindness destabilizes cruelty.
Because equality shatters the scaffolding of privilege.
Because mercy exposes the fraud of their dominion.
They fear it because they cannot cage it.
They scorn it because they cannot kill it.

Be woke, my friends.
Be fierce in tenderness.
Be unrelenting in your refusal to look away.
Carry the light that unsettles tyrants,
the fire that exposes every hidden rot.

For the word they would weaponize against us
is the very word that will save us.
And when history remembers,
it will not recall their mockery.
It will recall the ones who stayed awake.

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