Woke Up this Morning
When despair and hurt find a pathway out of your head
WARNING! THIS POST COULD CONTAIN TRIGGERING ELEMENTS.
I wrote this poem during the pandemic shutdown, when our TV screens were filled with horrors of black people being shot for shopping, driving with small children in the backseat who witness the slaughter, walking, sleeping in their own homes, knocking on the wrong door. So much pain played out over and over on screens the world over. It was too much and still is.
I took some of that pain and poured it into my hard drive, where it couldn’t harm me anymore. Unless the xx’s and oo’s are deleted they will be found again. And they will need to be confronted again, but they need not be absorbed again.
I am acknowledging the pain that formed this poem years ago.
I am acknowledging how close we are to the pain behind this poem being the reality for so many more people if we do not VOTE to save this democracy.
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
Barack Obama
WOKE UP THIS MORNING
woke up this morning
to a gut punch
woke up this morning
to a world gone mad
woke up this morning
breath snatched from my throat by the anguish of repetition
woke up this morning
to hear an angelic voice of a 4 year old comforting an adult
woke up this morning
to the NRA not coming to the defense of a law abiding license holding gun owner
woke up this morning
to a presumptive nominee who refuses to even address the situation in this country
woke up this morning
to the fact that i am considered less than
woke up this morning
to an anger i have never felt
work up this morning
to tears streaming down my face
woke up this morning
seeing a 15 year old boy crying out for his daddy
woke up this morning
realizing even if your arms are pinned to your sides you are still a threat
woke up this morning
to politicians continuing to beat a dead horse with a stack of emails
woke up this morning
to america