Glories
oil on canvas
60” x 72”
2025
Commission / SOLD
︎︎︎
All my Friends Dream The Same Dream
poem by Sarah O’Neal
All of my friends dream the same dream
A house, a garden, somewhere for the dogs to run
And the kids to grow
Our friends are starting to have babies now
and we want to be the village that raises them
Ari needs someone to hold her little one
So she can just rest sometimes
But im on the other side of town
And what would be 12 mins in a car
Is 58 on AC transit
And i just don't have energy most days
I get home from trying to convince 13 year olds
That poetry still matters in the grand scheme of things
Mostly i'm trying to convince myself
Kali is too embarrassed to tell the class what language
Her family speaks at home but after
She tells me she wants to speak Tagalog enough to teach her kids
And I think about the military bases
that took her so far away from her family tongue to begin with
and i want kids someday, i want Darija
to swim easily through their ears like the cascades
Flowing down the mountains my maternal family calls home
I want somewhere to belong to
To believe in
to fight for before it gets worst
Like everyone keeps saying
This is just the beginning
And i can’t imagine the end,
or which side of the wall we’ll end up on
Or who decided to set things up this way
they keep telling me that we are the beneficiaries
But all my friends dream the same dream
Cottages in the woods, somewhere with a stream to cool our feet
And enough space to write or paint or just learn how to bake bread
And teach the babies to swim and maybe a rope swing for the summer
And earth to turn over come spring and we never wanted to own it
Just wanted to spend our lives in service of it
Instead of servicing an empire that binds us
By threatening eviction or generational poverty
And we never wanted to mass produce anything
We just want the bombs to stop
We just want the world to know we never signed off
On the quadcopters or the bullets or the drone strikes or the border camps
We just want the library to stay open
We just want to get out of the city and road rage
And live small lives in towns where we know the names of the trees
That gift us shade and the stories in our neighbors family roots
And it's daunting, overhauling a country, an empire
Its histories, all the bodies buried and obliterated
So it could go on being “great”
We don’t want to be the best anything
We just want food that won’t give us cancer
And water without pesticides
And technology without military funding
And grocery stories without surveillance
A security guard armed to the teeth
Standing outside self checkout asking to see my receipt
I imagine once, people took their time
I imagine they swapped stories and pressed their palms together
To create beautiful things in reverence of the sea and sun
That taught them to breathe
I imagine staying alive took less thought
I imagine the anxiety caving in my chest
Was reserved for battles and sinking ships
I am alive under a sky so blue
I almost forget all that's ending
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Copyright Ruby Perkins