A broken tulip

.
.
.
I thought that was what all this was about—
all the shuttering of economy, sheltering in place.
The many weeks of bleach, of masks, we did all we were asked
with one thought—to save

breath.

Why else the mad rush for ventilators
except to shore up weak lungs? Why else the restrictions
reminding us of high-risk humans who already struggle to

breathe?

So what devilish irony is at play
when a man whose work is to protect and preserve life-breath
instead strangles out of another man

breath.

Exactly when, America, did you turn on your own?
When did justice become an excuse for crime?
The answer is too long. There is nothing to say. Just hold your breath

in the sickening disgust of it. The anger.
Humans are cursed with another irony.
We all know blood is the colour we share
yet the moments we demonize and divide ourselves
are marked

with blood.
.
.
.

Living with people who don’t share your skin colour doesn’t automatically lead to racism. There’s nothing about a colour that calls up the very work of Hell into your soul… colour here is a scapegoat, not the real issue. I didn’t really understand racism — the daily reality, intensity, and diabolical nature of it — until I lived in downtown Chicago. It is sickening. The recent murder of Ahmaud Arbery, and the even more recent murder of George Floyd, is not only news in America. We hear it outside of America, too. On so many levels it makes absolutely no sense to me. African Americans are Americans. They are legal citizens. America is *their* country. And they can’t be safe in their own country? The other people in the country haven’t accepted their presence, even after all these years? What on earth is going on? The African Americans who choose to live with hope, to speak up and demand justice, but who do not let their souls turn bitter with revenge–they are heroes.