Washington, D.C.
The present always holds a tremor of the past.
Margaret Randall
(“Immigration Law”)
Capital City, chokingly full of endless imperial imaginings and longings from even before of its very
Inception
Partially, created out of the mosquito-infected and the disease-ridden surroundings and festering swamps
Politically aborted and torn-city where huge imperial governmental buildings and massive monuments dominate and they continually rule over the surrounding overrun-environment
Tiredly, exhaling the architectural imitations of the Greek, Roman, French and the fondly remembered British empires, out of which this huge and powerful country, was violently born
Washington, D.C., temporarily anchored
In a place, where the American Indians, once happily and once freely roamed for thousands of years
A murderous Capital City, where the majority and the often highly impoverished black population, still live and are made to continually murder one another, largely fueled by the extreme frustration of their ongoing exclusion, and as a direct consequence of their deepening marginalization
All the while living in an important city overflowing with excess for some but no, nooo, never for them
A Capital City, cynically relegated to being a district, without any real federal political representation for its majority black population until that one day the population solidly turns majority white
With a hundred member U.S. Senate, in its midst with still only one black member or every now and then two for a brief time, and all of this in a nation where about 13% of the population is black, just one black Senator, who was quite often replacing the other one black U.S. Senator before her or him
Now, busily playing the role of U.S. President, constantly surrounded by powerful paranoid white men
Seemingly, afraid of who knows of what, given his profound loyalty to the existing system??????
And, all of this supposedly in a country, incredibly proud of its rule being based on the “consent of the governed”
Afraid maybe that the new black President, was going to all of a sudden become a revolutionary out of nowhere and just seemingly announce the overthrow of the for the overwhelming majority of his people existing illegitimate system of governance….Hii..Hii…Hiiii…..hooooooooyea
Washington, D.C.
The powerful and at the very same time highly provincial Capital City, of the quickly disappearing U.S. Empire during this transition time of the clearly arriving other major powers, soon to have to be taken very, very seriously unlike the Soviet Union in the recent Cold War past
Always focused on its very own myths, about itself and about its unique role in the world, and forever obsessed with only its very own exceptional actions, which are never wrong, no matter what
No, noooooooooo, never wrong whatever the outcome may be for others mostly black and brown
Washington, D.C.
Partly constructed by the brutally exploited North American black slave labor greatly enriching others
Washington, D.C., overflowing with its many impressive
Imperial buildings, which continually tend to overwhelm, the eager loyal North American masses, of visiting and often endlessly hard-working human beings
Oftentimes, merely relegated to having to aggressively push one another out of the way, with a growing sense of irritation, in an attempt to quickly glimpse, the grand monuments and the tall and arrogant, dead, so-called great White Men, who are still corrupting the view of the beautiful horizon nearly everywhere so many years later on
In a majority-minority city on the Potomac, drowning in endless colonialist rules, exceptionalist attitudes and superiority-undergirding regulations that all of us, especially those of us living in the U.S. periphery constantly have to deal with, and continually have to rise up against, time and again
Enfin, Washington, D.C., the domineering and politically exhaustedly-creaking imperialist Capital City, of the land of
The free, and
The home, of the brave.
©Gregory Gilbert Gumbs
