caged
when
i was five or six
i got lost in the video game arcade
of an amusement park
not really lost
just some game that caught my eye
that i stood fixated on
and when i finally looked back up
i thought my parents had gone
and the waterworks came
and arcade employees and security guards
surrounded me as if i were a little lost prince
they stayed with me
until we found my mom and dad
not two games away from where they left me
not five minutes before
and now
somewhere in america
there are thousands of migrant children
separated from their families
children fleeing poverty and war
children fleeing the murderous hands of street gangs
who chop up little girls
and leave their bodies strewn in the streets
who put bullets in boy’s heads
children separated from their father’s touch
children separated from their mother’s smile
children separated from all they’ve ever known
five and six-year olds
who only wanted to come
to this shithole nation
for a chance at a somewhat better life
this ain’t no white boy video arcade bullshit
it’s not even measurable on any any scale
and we’re told it could take
two years to get these families back together
two years of pushing these kids
through a system
of psychological torture and fear
seven-hundred and thirty more days
locked up in camps with strangers
so scared their only recourse is to beat and pillage
locked up in cages
because they became
pawns in a game played by a hateful madman
playing out his sickest
psycho version of the american dream
a trust fund cowboy racist
who just wants to watch it all burn for a profit
and his name in the history books
no matter how treacherous
five and six-year olds
who don’t even know the language
being shouted at them
47,000 kids
a whole village
who we’ve mentally fucked
forever
the tragedy of their lives
placed so casually into news stories
about celebrity diets and the drumbeats of this year’s war
shoved at the tail end
of a luxury car ad
or one for the latest video game system
that’ll be all the rage
come this summer.
--John Grochalski
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