FALLING FROM A MORE PERFECT UNION

Alito’s words stilled my own.

A falling body has no time

to waste on words when breath

is so precious and undermined

by space displaced by diving

thoughts toward a very dark place.

It is not just Roe which falls with me;

but, likely Obergefell, Griswold 

and Loving, too. So old,

I recall them all. The sacred tome

which gives the rights owed humanity

is our constitution which gives privacy a home

of safety, freedom and security.

Alito steals them all from me.

The greater fear is that he would say

mob rule would bind our hands again 

with state’s rights to up-end a nation’s democracy.

The word privacy does not exist, so he says.

Nor does the word slavery, nor contraception,

nor sexuality, nor women’s and persons of color’s

right to vote and have a say in lives they own;

because they don’t in the words originally

written for white land-owning gentlemen alone.

But that is the  point, one no longer hidden.

White male supremacy, and protecting the wealthy

is Republicans’ true north. Which is why 

even women support letting democracy die.

Why even kind men still vote for extremist

candidates they know can save their wealth

by telling the most outrageous lies.

Stolen election is not the first lie.

The first was that women and Africans are less

than any white man of wealth could allow

to be free, for fear their fields of wealth

once shared, would lie fallow. 

I thought I could no longer write poetry

while my love for country makes me cry

knowing my beloved Law is often denied.

The law is sacrosanct, you see. 

Alito’s words mean the courts are no longer free.

And that will be the death of the rights

of you and me, and perhaps the world

whom my country once led toward democracy.

The world is falling along with me.

I am not alone if you join me and vote 

for those who would protect us as we fall,

and right the wrong words which stand so tall

we can no longer recognize truth at all.