Simply waiting will not do at all.
When did simply waiting
accomplish anything at all?
Yogis pose in silent waiting,
fingers touching in connection.
While we who simply wait
have no connection at all,
and lose ourselves
in self-destruction when we fall
within the ring where the fight is set
by the one percent and big tech bros
placing their weight and cash
heavily upon our backs
until the fight is so unfair
we realize we have not a prayer.
Church pews sit empty.
The fight is on every screen.
We fail to realize we are in the ring.
We cannot simply watch the fight.
Simply waiting cannot make all right.
We will go down with the count
toppled by high winds, fire, and flood.
The severe cold will freeze life’s blood.
Recognize we are in the fight.
We have always been in, to our chagrin,
fighting for our very lives;
while being entertained to silence
and static acceptance of violence.
Simply waiting did not stop slavery,
Jim Crow, voter suppression, child abuse,
sexual harassment and women’s subjugation.
This has always been the fight of our nation.
This is not a new fight we watch as battles
in the ring to see which latest victim falls.
We cannot simply watch from the sidelines
because it is us inside the ring.
It is we who shall fall.
We the people shall participate.
We the people shall win or lose.
Do not sit in your corner.
Don’t throw in the towel.
Get up and fight. It is not too late.
Then get to the polls and vote to win.
All bets are on you. Gloves at the ready, and grin!
Then prepare for the backlash,
one worse than the one before.
Get in the fight again.Knock your opponent to the floor
with such a strong vote he cannot rise.
Put him down for the count forevermore.
Then raise your gloves high and stand tall.
Simply waiting will not do at all.
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.
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Filed under COMMENTARY, POETRY, POLITICS
Tagged as constitutional rights, end of democracy, extremism, Griswold, Justice Alito, Loving, miscegenation, Obergefell, ROE V. WADE, rule of law, slavery, VOTE, voter suppression, white supremacist, women