We have choices to make, to support those who we are called to support or those who have and will deny, neglect, and oppress with whatever means they have. I will not support those who destroy families by splitting them up at the border for seeking asylum or by shooting, choking, or wrongfully imprisoning their sons for the alleged crime of being liberated from the plantation. Never.
Today’s poem of the day, “Some Thoughts on Vengeance” is from my book, Heartwood. It’s a wake-up call that men with batons are only as good as the goals those batons are used for. Today, they are used for injustice.
SOME THOUGHTS ON VENGEANCE
Dry hissing breath from sun-leathered men
becomes whistling spite between their teeth
– kernels hanging on the cob touched
by the husks of their racist tongues.
When they stare, they stare at flesh.
But what they see are ends that mean
the devil and angels are one and the same
lifting them on the crow’s frayed wings.
For generations they’ve picked at carcasses
after they smashed the shit right out of them,
dragged them through mud, hung them high, or
lashed their black bodies to split rail fences.
We knew they’d feud and lynch ‘til they meet
the law’s sunglasses, motorcycles, and batons
wielded by men who are wielded by men
who know so much better because of law.
Peter Walks for Democracy 