Monday, January 1, 2018

day THREE HUNDRED and FORTY SEVEN



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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