Citizens United

We were always going to have a fight on our hands...

On a stage where the musk of 
othering pumps through vents in the walls 
and stalls conversation and community,
decency and opportunity, we are arranged 
by citizens united in wealth, 
their profits skyrocket unchecked.

Big men invest, smiling as they see 
their preferred checks and balances 
fatten portfolios and fund division, and derision, and distraction,
hoping we overlook genocide, and rape, and suicide to escape,
on the other side of the world,
overlook the police on our streets
with power to kill at unprecedented rates 
they supplied and demanded
while presidents preach justice and reform
But keep “law and order” the norm –  it doesn’t matter.
We blast American pleas of sisters and brothers, aunties and mothers 
Begging us to stop and to listen, assess our suspicion, turn friction to traction,
add humanity to action.

We protest on campuses, march in the streets,
Write and post, organize and vote.
And still we can’t educate those blinded by rage 
at the cost of milk, bread, and gas and the hate that they utter 
About the people they’ve othered.

Unity feels so wrong when the pull is this strong
to ignore fact, ignore truth, ignore Love. 

The sirens of history are wailing but the working class is failing
to live well, to be seen to be heard under the amplification of capitalization,
the fat wallets of the few who view us with greed in their eyes
and feed us their lies:

“There’s a them and an us, and if I can pay for my home, 
go to college, get stuck with loans, 
why should anyone get a meal for free? 
Why give to them and not to me?”

Today we remember how long ago we surrendered
to men dressed up as democracy
tricking not treating as they were preaching, 
“Without them, you will be rich too.”

---