Shame, in Five Acts

(Just your typical sign at the checkout counter of Dick’s Sporting Goods)

Act One: The Dream

Brown people are not stealing
the jobs of white people.
Brown people are not stealing.
White people steal in the dead of night—
borders, jobs, lands, people, words, paintings, ideas, bodies.
This is empire; this is colony.
Stealing it all and blaming those who lose it all.

Brown people are dreaming
dreams already made reality for the white people
who complain of brown people wanting too much,
living above their station, taking jobs meant for others,
articulating a desire to be treated as human beings.
Brown people are dreaming of a time when brown means
Work, labor, vida, amor—, and not having to see brown.

Act Two: One Lid at a Time

The alarm rings.
One eyelid opens.
Is he still president?
The other eyelid shudders,
can’t open, can’t greet the day.

The other eyelid opens,
burdened, heavy,
willing the eye not to see.
Do I still live in the United States?
Both eyelids close, shuttered.

The alarm insists.
Both eyes regard, en garde.
The body resists this existence
in a regime made in USA,
built to deny, hurt, annihilate.

Eyes open; heart resists.
Beat, come on, beat, heart,
start the day.  Beat, come on,
heart, beat the regime of the USA.
Beat, heart.  Beaten down.

The heart opens, starts the day.
Extends the glass, filled half-way.
Exists, resists, insists, has its say.
Buhm, buhm.  Buhm, buhm.
Buhm.  The regime seems here to stay.

 

Act Three: The Public Square

Charlottesville lies awake,
wide awake to the vultures
circling overhead, and to the
creatures in the swamp below,
as yet undrained.

Tiki torches take the public square,
telling a tale of who gets to spew
hate and rage and whose protest
must be put down, gunned down,
carred down, charred, laid to rest.

Both sides, they say?
One side was armed to the teeth,
Opening the mouth, speaking in
tongues that lie in wait, lie and hate–
a surefire way to create two sides.

The other side, you ask?
Where were they?
Told to stay away for their own safety,
told to be quiet for their own protection,
unable to be and breathe in the public square.

 

Act Four: Praise Be

Praise be, Roy Moore!
Rise and shine and give God your glory!
You are a good Christian man.
You are an elected official.
You are the best Republican
the State of Alabama has to offer.
You (allegedly) raped young girls.
You are to be defended, supported, paid for
by the Grand Old Party and its Groping Old President,
whose support for you confirms all we knew.

Praise be, Roy Moore!
Rise and shine and give God your glory!
You believe women should not hold office
but girls should hold you.
Your abnegating wife stands by your side
because the State of Alabama needs a landslide.
You cast shame; you cast blame,
but you feel none of your own, for
the Grand Old Party needs its tea
in the figure of Christian rapist Roy Moore.

 

Act 5: U.S. on the U.S. State Department Warning List

The State Department Warning List should include a lengthy bit on the United States and the dangers of traveling here.

Los Angeles, Ferguson, St. Louis, Baltimore, Chicago, Minneapolis, and a long etcetera: Beware police violence

Charlottesville, Lexington, Richmond, and a long etcetera:  Beware Nazi and KKK violence on the streets

Sutherland Springs, Las Vegas, Orlando, Charleston, Newtown, Blacksburg, and a long etcetera: Beware mass shootings

Hollywood, Washington, D.C., Massachusetts, Alabama, New York, everywhere: Beware sexual harassment, discrimination, retaliation, and rape

The United States: Beware the devastation of land and water

The Unites States airports and points of entry: Beware border violence against non-whites and non-Christians

The message? Beware, beware, beware.  No one welcome here.

(We’ve got a long road ahead.)