Witness Stand
Each of us is a witness
hop up on the stand
plead your case
You with the dead eyes
and bright smile
who stood with the rest of us
and watched while five-year old
Mariana was ripped from her mother
and put in a cage,
I was alive during
the time of the oligarchs
I was impressed by them
How does one become
a billionaire?
With so much money
floating in the air
do you still
feel human?
like you should
shit, piss,
breathe the same
I don’t know
but I doubt it
When that one came to power
the one with the orange skin
and puffed hair like a
Spider’s web
gone batty
a landing strip for birds
of prey
We were surprised
but did not take it
too seriously
I mean, it had to have
been a joke
This is what we told ourselves
and all jokes, good or bad, come to an
end, eventually
In fact, doesn’t everything
So, in the beginning,
that first night we
couldn’t sleep
when the election
results were coming
in and when it
seemed finally as
though the dream was real
we pinched our skins
and went to sleep
While we slept small
men crawled across
our pillows and wept
When we woke
in the morning
our blankets were drenched
with their tears
We told ourselves
it was sweat and promised
to prepare ourselves for
the work ahead
Still, we did not prepare
We woke and turned
our heads, sighing like
the spouses of bastard children
we went about our day
We turned off all the televisions
No one watched them anyway
We had our phones now.
They…
