by Steve Hellyard Swartz
While we’re waiting for Superman and Godot, might as well wait for Mr. Welch, who said to Senator McCarthy :
You’ve done enough
Dharun Ravi
Remember that name
Molly Wei
Remember hers, too
Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei
Dharun, the roommate of
Tyler Clementi, whose name isn’t that important, he was only 19, just a kid
But Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei
Those two you’re going to know
Mr. Welch, where are you? Superman and Godot are lying low, but you – Mr. Welch?
In dorm rooms, in playgrounds, in McDonald’s, in chatrooms, Mr. Welch Where is your -
You’ve done enough
It wasn’t there when we needed it
Not there when Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei set up their video equipment to
beam Tyler Clementi, the just a kid, having sex with another just a kid who just so happened to be a man
You’ve done enough
was nowhere in the mix when
Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei broadcast Tyler and the other guy
having sex
Live on the internet
You’ve done enough
wasn’t anywhere in the ether, either, when Seth Walsh, 13, just a kid, only a littler kid, was taunted again and again, so much so that he hanged himself in his backyard
I wonder if Tyler, standing on the railing of the George Washington Bridge, as cars sped by behind him and the Hudson flowed to the sea below
I wonder if Seth, with the noose tightening around his neck
I wonder if Tyler and Seth, two just a kids of the many thousands who kill themselves or try to every year, I wonder
if right before they closed their eyes for the last time, if they didn’t think that this was the only way out, the only way for them in a world where we never ever seem to learn that we have done enough
Steve Hellyard Swartz is Poet Laureate of Schenectady, NY. He is a frequent contributor to New Verse News. Swartz is a 2011 Pushcart Prize nominee for Poetry. His poems have appeared in The Patterson Review, The Southern Indiana Review, The Kennesaw Review, and online at Best Poem and switched-on gutenberg. He is the winner of a First Place Award given by the Society of Professional Journalists for Excellence in Broadcasting. In 1990, Never Leave Nevada, a movie he wrote and directed, opened at the US Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
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