POLITICAL POEM: In Daze Not To Follow

The plantation had fallen
Into this repair
As fore many
Present
Work
Over and above
The well, known
Used
Too deep scars
And familiar ditches dug
Subject to an other privilege
However bound
Too knew found freedom
And worldwide travails
In daze not to follow
As anew master
What is foremost if not awe
As the perennial struggle
Only partially one
Pregnant with possibility
Poised as a new virgin of reality
Offering womb to grow
And inescapably bringing labor wince again
As tender feat must come to terms
With maturity
Of awe that is
Never still
Borne
So exceptionally sow

While I wrote this poem long before Donald Trump’s election, I am offering this poem as an inauguration poem.  This poem addresses two major realities which are often met with conflicting attitudes.  The first reality is that we live in a nation and a world far from justice for all.  There are endemic, chronic injustices which bear heavily on the daily realities of countless millions of people.  This can be dreadfully depressing and diabolically disheartening.  The second reality is that every disappointing condition can be met with our higher, better selves and serve as an invitation to build solidarity with others experiencing injustice to create a better future.  Also, there is hope in the fact that persons who have experienced chronic injustice, for years or generations, have developed hardy and hearty abilities to cope and combat protracted injustice.  This reservoir of collective experience, skills, and hope for a better future may very well be the most positive force on earth.  This poem’s opening line alludes to the centuries-long battle for racial justice fought by the descendants of slaves against virulent racism and ever-morphing Jim Crow laws.  The Black Lives Matter movement is yet another creative continuation of this ongoing struggle.   In the short run, those living by the short run seem to have the advantage.  However, in the long run, those committed to the long haul, transgenerational justice, are greatly advantaged in bringing about better answers to the eternal human questions.  The apparent reality that eternal human questions can not be fully and finally solved on this earth is not an adequate excuse for cynicism.  Better is better and worse is worse.  Apologists preying on divisions in humanity for their own easy profit are as shortsighted as they are inhumane.  Donald Trump may be the king of profiting off of easy-to-divide scenarios where the well-heeled are well suited to make a killing from the ensuing chaos and trauma.  The answer to the stupid question that is Donald Trump is unyielding solidarity with the whole of humanity and transform the cowardly profits of injustice through the courageous cost of justice borne by all people of good will.  May we find the courage to put whatever skin is necessary into the game to assure overwhelmingly abundant opportunities for justice to prevail.  May our labors give berth to wondrous new realities.