The More Affordable Option

 

The other day,

there was a pool of blood

on the sidewalk,

spilling out into the street

where my feet were picking their way

through the day’s other horrors.

It seemed

a premonition for my cities,

and the men

who purport to run them.

 

Five obese, obscenely rich men

to whom we gave

the right to tell

poor working women

that they are too fat.

Five insanely selfish, callous men

privileged to hold

the fate of nations

in their whim, as if

selecting one wine or another

from today’s menu

with a wave of

bored, bloated,

disinterested fingers.

Who get to decide,

after their bellies are full,

if the likes of you or I get to eat,

tomorrow.

 

We are so willing to pay:

to be distracted,

for our dumbing down, our conversion

into mouthpieces.

Meanwhile we have priced

wisdom out of reach,

making ignorance

the more affordable option.

We believe now

the smokescreens-

the complicity of the poor

in their own poverty.

 

Forgetting the power of legend,

of the hero’s quest,

of the individual story.

We bought the myth

of the rugged anti-hero,

the vigilante loner

slinging a gun the

way a mother of other species

would carry and nurture

her offspring.

 

For too long

we have inspected the genitalia

of women

with magnifying glasses,

so we do not notice the missiles

aimed at borders

of true human indecency;

and ready to be launched.

 

“I don’t want nobody telling me

what I can or cannot do,”

you spit onto the ground

with the venom that leaks

from your brain. We try to tell you,

“if you build there, your home will

collapse and kill your family;

if you s**t there,

you will poison your neighbor;

if you invest there,

you will have nothing left

after a decade.”

 

But you turn a deaf ear

and focus your petty

boring little interests

on telling others

when and how

and how often

and with whom

to find consensual pleasure.

 

I am not blessed

with the kinds of words or thoughts

to respond to this hate,

to the madness overflowing

the banks of human sanity

even as waters overflow

human capacity;

today in Nepal, India, Africa.

The house

of my ex sister-in-law’s daughter,

in Corpus Christi.

 

If I fight with love,

it I because that is what I know.

I wish I had the wisdom

to wield compassion as a sword;

to take us back

through time to the place

where we stopped listening;

or forward to the time

where we start again.

I want to learn to walk

paths of human vulnerability

without slicing my own foot open

on those razor edges

between oil and farm fields.

I hope for the day

when none of us need

to watch either the news

or the sidewalks

for today’s fresh blood.

Author's Note

I wrote this over the span of a week, when overwhelmed by news and a general sense of impending unrest, discontent, and near riot conditions where I live. I find the imbalance of power staggering- where a handful of people candecide the fate of entire nations; where countries can be wiped off the map in an afternoon. My heart breaks anew every day.

This was translated from my original in Spanish, here:
http://www.writerscafe.org/writing/zorra_encantada/1953971/