new year’s
day
--for erica garner
i think
about getting
pizza for lunch
about the work
day dragging on
and the snow
outside
with fresh
holes in my shoe
i think
about how i don’t
sleep too well anymore
and how my eye
has twitched in anxiety for months
i think
about the
prospect of three hundred and sixty five
new days
living under a
moronic would-be despot
and it makes me
want to weep
but still i
dust myself off to face the gray
i think
about police
chokeholds
about roadside
killings
about little
boys shot holding toy guns
i think about
mike and freddie
and laquan and sandra
tamir, trayvon and
the countless others
eric and the
phrase “i can’t breathe”
little blue men
in little blue hats
getting away
with murder
i think
america will
never be what it claims to be
because it
doesn’t even know how to begin
but i think
i’d like us to
try and start from scratch
rip the
constitution into shreds
scratch out
that bogus declaration of independence
a fourteenth
chance to start all over again
maybe do it
right this time
then i think
what a fucking
daydream
so i go back
to thinking
about nonsense
i think about
what’s for dinner
or will the
super put in the new oven
that book
that movie
that tv show
but all these
thoughts
good or bad
are mine
are a luxury
today
they don’t
really matter much
because
somewhere out there erica
the world has
dimmed
it has failed
us all
and you
are gone.
--John Grochalski
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