Goodbye to Jayne Cortez

Great poets are warriors. Jayne Cortez, who died on December 28th 2012, was a great poet and a great warrior. Were the world under attack and a champion needed to stand for us, I’d have taken Jayne over the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger any day, remaking life and death and every hopeful or violent human act between these two poles of being and unbeing in her own rich brown image. Her smile, her song, the machine gun of her mouth, shooting bullets of truth, blasting ignorance and fear with outrage and courage, attacking misogyny and racism and greed with her own bursting body, words blossoming into sound on stages and sidewalks and in rallies for peace and rallies for war, war on warmongers, war on earth-eaters, war on baby killers and lady killers and corporate killers in fine-tailored suits. Not for nothing was her band called The Firespitters. Jayne Cortez spit fire. She was a furious angel, a truth-teller, a seer of love and love scarred, a salve and a balm for the wounded, a spear and a mortal foe for the oppressors of women, the oppressors of the poor, the oppressors of the earth, the oppressors of her people. And her people were ALL people with love in their hearts. Jayne was 78 years old when her body was returned to the earth. Her words will live on, her being and breath, in the songs of newborn babies, spitting fire.

Thank you Jayne. See you around…