"JANUARY 20th"
By Gabrielle Faust
Flint steely skies
And bone-biting cold
Held our breath at knife point,
And mute was the world
Around me,
Songs sung by birds
Solemnly silent as if they
Too knew the profundity
Of the malevolence
Brooding at dawn.
Outside the flags
Still flew at half-mast,
Tangled in the trees
And forgotten.
In the ground I can hear
The bones of my ancestors
Chittering and shaking,
Raging where they lay
In their sorrow,
The war weary spirits
Of the brave that
Sacrificed their limbs,
Their sanity,
Their lives
For a democracy
That now dies an
Indecent death,
No honor within
The diming light,
Where a self-proclaimed king
Wastes no time
In skinning our dreams alive.
At times on this day
I believe I forgot to breathe,
A woman standing on a beach
Watching a tsunami approach.
Engulfed by the overwhelming
Realization that the
Years learning to swim against
The tide had only made
Her feel small now,
Like a single grain of sand.
And yet there
In the dark numbness
Of her stunned mind
A small flicker.
Could she learn to breathe
Under water?
Or perhaps hold her breath
For the next four years.
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