Do you remember where you were when you learned that slavery was real?
When your parents sat you down and explained to you
that the horrific dramatizations on tv
werent just sensationalism
it was our history
Do you remember when they told you there were no more indians?
Just poverty on reservations
turquoise jewelry
miniature dreamcatchers to catch the ghosts
you pass
as they hang from review mirrors
or that wars arent as heroic as they are in movies
and they told us that world war 2 was the greatest war
but do you remember when you found out that it never had to happen?
That we knew about the death camps back in 1939
we had the layout of the railroads and the locations of those death factories
and we sat back
and waited
while 8 million jews, gypies and homosexuals died.
And do you remember when you read
that when we Finally got there
we set them free
except for those with black triangles
who were treated with one way tickets to prisons and asylums.
Do you remember how upset you got?
How you cried until you choked?
The ulcers that burned through you
as you churned over those images
of children being bayoneted
and families forced off cliffs
boys with diamonds and no hands
do you remember fantasizing about time machines?
How to fix things, if only…
if only you had a shotgun to take to 1847 auction.
A bag of dynamite in Cambodia
How about 3 dozen AK47′s for Geronimo’s warriors.
Time machines would make it all so easy to fix.
But do you remember when you finally gave up on those fantasies?
When you started to make a plan
when you heard a higher calling…
and you werent sure if it was unbriddled idealism
the spirit of god
or just the guilt that you were never meant to carry.
Remember the first time you held up a fist?
When you stopped buying sugar from places in the carribean still using slave labor
refused to buy paper products from companies helping to knock down the rainforest
the day you marched in your first protest
and demanded every last soldier come home alive…
home.
Because you have done enough reading
enough crying
and enough praying
and god be damned if this is going to happen again on your watch.
This will not be my history!
Do you remember the day you first heard the name matthew shepard?
And you didnt know anything about him
other than he was gay
and he was dead.
After that,
that articles came in a fervor….
another gay teen
another Gay Teen
ANOTHER GAY TEEN
dead.
And the ulcer bursts through with the same velocity it did when you heard that slavery was real.
But this time
it was on your watch.
I remember the day I figured out that genocide doesnt end
that slavery still exists for girls
war endures
and child labor marches on
just like our history
there is no time machine
and I dont own a gun
but someone
somewhere had to say stop
remember the days
you learned to say stop.
You learned to scream it?
You wrote it on posterboards and held it up in town squares
so that even god could see
STOP!
And it didnt?
Do remember the day you realized
they were finding a woman in a dumpster almost everyday
when we marched to those big gates and screamed stop!
And it just got worse.
Now its not just women and they arent in dumpsters
its entire families and they are at the corner store
they are next door.
Do you remember when you screamed stop and nobody listened
so you just watched
and hoped
that one day
there would be time machines.
