Free-form statement poetry

 As the challenge of Poor Air Quality resurfaces, I let out this statement on what I see in my own country.  I am tired of this mental disease against freedom here and had hoped last November would begin to kill it off.  Then January 6th happened, and I was made painfully aware that this may never go away until long after I'm dead.  I do see it and hear it everywhere and it makes me afraid to go anywhere.

I didn’t want power.   

I didn’t want to be self-absorbed.  

 I didn’t want to try to bend the world to my view of what’s right, 

but I see so much callousness.   

I see people not caring and I see people treating others like vermin.  

 I’m reminded of what someone once said was said as an insult to them, 

“you’re not human or even an animal.”   

Now that is almost impossible to put in the back part of my mind.  

 I see people tweet “rescue this dog from euthanizing,” 

“rescue this cat from getting destroyed,” 

while African-Americans get gunned down, 

Asian-Americans get beaten, 

Latin Americans get arrested like this is Iran, Egypt or Pakistan, 

refugees from those countries forced back behind barbed wire and freezing cold 

and there are endless bigoted murders of the LGBTQ+ community, 

meaning we prioritize people who are different below pets, 

meaning they aren’t as good as animals to most of us.  

 They ask me if I want to become a Politician, 

if I want to be on the front lines, 

confronting our carelessness to these problems.   

To become power-hungry and self-absorbed, 

a person who refuses to look at those who see differently 

without seeing enemies he would gladly gun down 

if he was guaranteed the Police would raise no charges.  

 How long, in this rapidly-deteriorating world, can we say no to drinking the devil’s wine?  

 How long must we endure people who see this violence and say “they deserve it.”  

 How long must we see the stars, bars and swastika paraded alongside the stars and stripes 

before we can no longer tell the difference?  

 What will it be, America, 

return to the nation you deserve to be 

or fall into a dictatorship you call a theocracy to legitimize it in the minds of the followers of blind faith?   

Will you return to celebrating people, 

or fall to praising one deluded man who claims to be the second coming?  

 Will you stop shaming those who believe differently for having their own thoughts, tastes and desires, 

or silence them in what you call “therapy” but other countries would call it what it is, torture!   

Will you stop taking bold young men and women aside and telling them to just trust in the Republicans who are falling more and more day by day into a downward-spiraling fascist cult that grows ever-increasingly rigid 

or let us be without trauma?!   

When will you shake off the shackles of the beast?!  

 When will you get vaccinated, not just against COVID, but against the nationwide epidemics of racism, sexism and homophobia?!  

 When will you value your own First Amendment again?!   

When will you memorize more of the Bible than just Leviticus 20:13 and John 3:16?!  

What’s it going to take?!