Onward: To American Protesters
Onwards towards that open air we’re to breathe!
It’s time for us our clenched fists to unsheathe
And with the rage we’ve swallowed we now seethe!
We should batter the roof of this vast jail
Down on this global dog until its tail
We cut and reach the fresh air to inhale.
Its barking puppies we should never heed.
Mercy on them on the earth is indeed
But mercilessness to the sheep. Proceed!
This vicious dog that has shattered the dreams
Of regal great souls* and gone to extremes
Should be chained with all its puppet regimes.
This wrathful river that shall overthrow
Despotic palaces as a last blow
Is our age-old festered, deferred dream flow.†
To behave as humans they had much time
Which they wasted and never quit their crime.
Now they’ll have nowhere to hide but in slime.
We shall not stop before we reach our aim,
To raise a new flag free of free world’s blame,
Purged of a long life of slaughter and shame.
6.15.2020
* See Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Slave’s Dream”.
† See Langston Hughes’s “Harlem” (also entitled "A Dream Deferred").
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