Every morning
the electroejaculated goats
scream
my wife texts me from work
complaining
and on the twitter feeds and facebook posts
Ferguson Missouri burns -
You don’t think supplying army (military) grade equipment
to the police was unintentional do you?
That any conflict in the world between police and protest
looks exactly like this?
That anyone taking pictures, especially reporters, recharging
their equipment in the local McDonald’s
wrenched from their seat, their head jammed against
a cement wall by an ordinary lug saying oops
before being taken in and arrested
because they didn’t show their i.d. fast enough
You don’t really still think this is about race or
race wars like the bigots and racists do, do you?
You don’t think the government had plans for this,
their contingencies for “growing inequality” Can you say
pharaohs and slaves, bitches? (No really, in mathematical terms
you have to look at the modern world’s inequality in those terms
or even larger)
That we live within a two tiered justice system
that the effects of climate change have now been brutally calculated
You don’t think they’re worried
that now the white shit, not just the brown and the black
is starting to hit the fan
And you don’t think Ferguson Missouri is still
just a small town in the middle of the country,
do you?
What? you expect me to say that unless things
change it’s your hometown next -
it’s in your heart -
it’s the whole damn world - boom?
maybe
Steve Lavigne runs a local poetry group in Champaign Illinois - cupoetry.com. It meets weekly to discuss, create and share poetry in order to build community through the power and practice of poetry.