Forgive me if I put
Some dry dates into this poem,
In three years time or so,
1million more Americans
Will be born
Who have no idea
Of the dangers they missed
Or how worse the world
Could have been...
From the beginning of 2017
To the beginning of 2021,
We were besieged by a man
- A maniac -
Who, declaring himself
Better than us all -
As if only he had all the answers,
And with lies and photo ops
Utilized a well practiced maneuver
Of controlling truth itself,
To fool half the country
And become the most powerful man
In the world.
And what did he do?
Nothing really.
Oh, he will be remembered
For the deaths of hundreds of thousands
And for a vast waste of resources
And the general detriment of many people's lives,
But oh, what a golden opportunity he squandered.
Gifted with temporal power of great magnitude
He gave us only pain,
His only grace was his laziness -
He couldn't do just one lick of work
That would have fooled us all
And extended his tyranny in time.
Where is he now?
Mute, in an aging body
That soon enough will die.
Each of us has a measure
Of temporal power
To be seduced by,
Yet many resist its lure
By following this simple truth:
Let truth control your deeds.
What if, what if, what if
The South, in 1860,
Had recognized that slavery
Was wrong
There is no universal right
To own another -
Just the opposite -
And had agreed to free
Every man, woman and child
Held in bondage by 1865 -
Five years to get their financial houses
In order and with a caveat
Of a blanket amnesty
For crimes against humanity
Committed in the days before...
Truth opens eyes
To see new vistas
And if we,
In the silence of our hearts,
Listen,
We can push truth forward
With the living of our lives.
I will say a truth to all of you, today,
Who cling so fiercely to power
At all costs
To control others
Or whatever your crazy reason is,
Your time too will pass,
Leaving nothing behind
But empty husks
Blowing away
To nowhere.
Carl Scott Harker ©2021
_________________________________________________________
My latest collection of poetry — poems written between late April to Late October, 2020, is now available and you can find it on Amazon here: Above Us Only Sky.
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