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We Have Met the Enemy,
and It Is Us

 

Three years of fear and loathing? The world has turned surreal.
News programs sanctify our fear, our horrors the real deal.
A man once enigmatic tweets himself too clearly.
Those truths that we held evident and came to hold most dearly
were fictions in our history books. Our empire’s like the others––
built upon the backs and bones of those we call our brothers.
Who is guilty of these sins? We all are, one by one
for watching TV movies and not the smoking gun.
Our leaders, all fine actors, draw their princely wages
While madmen fire on schools, it’s children we put in cages.
America, unite as one and see the truth about you.
See what the whole world now sees that causes them to doubt you.
If you hold religion as your reason to support
this man who isn’t really all that he might purport,
what religion really is, please take the time to see:
What you do to the least of my children, you have done to me.”
Whatever else might profit you, this is the bottom line.
God’s children aren’t all born within the borders you define.
“Give me your tired and weary, your yearning to be free.”
Must we scrape these words off the Statue of Liberty?
Open your eyes. We are no longer saviors of all.
Perhaps we never were. We turn our backs and build a wall.

—Judy Dykstra-Brown—