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November 20, 2021

Red Line Poem

I wrote this poem this afternoon. I needed to do something constructive with my swelling anger:

Red Line Poem

As the

train moves,

the orange

mesh along

the tracks

where the

crane fell

turns into

orange ribbons

that run through

my view.

I am

going to work,

in a sense,

but more so,

reeling from

the sucker-

punch, you

get when

you expect

America not

to America.

Oh, the power

fake white tears

possess in

America,

Oh, what

a deft conflation

there is

between property

and whiteness,

And with what

deftness you

can frame

the narrative,

when you’re

the ostensible

narrator.

So that

a teenaged

white vigilante

on the wrong

side of

puberty could be

led to believe

the very idea

of property,

was his province

to protect,

Whether the

car was his,

whether the

City was his ,

Or whether the

gun was

his…

Only in  a

country where

white male

mediocrity

is so

carefully watered,

and tended to,

like the last

example

of its species,

would there

even be

a field

of reference,

for this

malevolent,

useless,

man child

to insert

himself

somewhere

he

didn’t

remotely

belong,

and then

murder two

men who

had the

temerity to

protest against

the very

system that

led him

to believe

he belonged

there in

the first place,

and

which today,

so painfully,

and predictably

exonerated him,

for taking

the lines,

that were

already drawn,

for him and his,

and remorselessly

coloring them in.

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