The Choice (Haiku)

When in a dark room,

our choice is to close our eyes,

or light a candle.

(c) RCGA, 2020

The Sentencing

Sometimes you write something in a hurry, and it needs editing, and maybe expansion or reworking, but the dirty baby that it is still deserves a viewing and a clean diaper, so here it is. I don’t expect it to be loved by everyone; but then again, nothing ever is, really. Love is wonderful, if you can get it, but equity, even when it has to be frogwalked into being, means you have self-respect and boundaries that may have taken the contributions of a thousand ancestors to achieve. I don’t care if you love me. But treat me as your equal, or acknowledge your time is over.

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In your desire to take the natives from their native place,

full knowing you will always judge the difference of their face,

in your determination to make them look just like you,

but not too much, you know, enough, to pass in your purview,

to dress them up and force them to their knees in bullied piety…

well, that might seem okay to you, but it’s not right to me.

When you moved in and took the land from people who would share,

you only knew of ownership and dominance, despair;

where you came from you were the very bottom of the pole,

and so you raped and pillaged, and you lied, and killed, and stole,

until you had your subjugated tribes called civilized,

and all the opportunity to lord them that you prized.

But that was not enough, because you had a bigger goal:

a large ambition that would only be fueled with a toll

paid with the blood of others, taken from their native place,

full knowing you will always judge the difference of their face.

When finally by civil war and discord you were forced to set them free

you still did not see equals, and that isn’t right to me.

You kept pushing, you kept pushing, so you wouldn’t have to see

any sign of happiness or growth, or plain humanity

to reservations in the places that were least interesting to you

in backwaters and shotgun shacks and barren deserts, too;

you fought their education, their employment, who they wed,

you said that the only good ones were the ones that were dead.

You went back on each treaty, each agreement that you wrought

because you didn’t have respect for people that you’d bought

or people that you’d treated like the offal on your shoe

for generations acting towards them as if they’d wronged you.

You thought they had no freedom in a land you gained for free,

and the wrong of that is still wrong, it sure isn’t right to me.

You blocked their votes with Jim Crow and with gerrymandering,

you put a sign for you alone on, face it, everything

redlining cities, backs of buses, back doors, separate schools,

you wouldn’t even share your water, like a bunch of fools,

and even when you murdered them, or made them disappear,

you never made them go away. Look around you, they’re still here.

It’s time for you to face the fact that when you build a state

on the backs of people forced to linger in the third estate,

one day you will wake up and you won’t recognize the place,

full knowing you will always judge the difference of their face,

yet still you will at last pay due to all the debts unpaid;

responsibility is yours, and balance will be weighed.

© RCGA 2020

Floor Veteran

Some days it’s been long enough
that I forget what it was like
to work as a busy nurse on a full unit,
where everyone is
dipping and diving around each other,
lifting and pulling,
up to the elbows in excrement
and then up to the elbows in a scrubbing sink,
flushing, flushing, flushing,
with toilets, with syringes, with hoppers.
Battling the clock,
a dozen conflicting agendas.
and the full bladders of self and others.
Being kindly dominant to a variety of strangers
to get them to eat, or not eat,
to swallow pills, to roll over,
to take a deep breath,
to take one more step and pivot.
Struggling to get someone into support stockings,
or out of them.
Struggling to advocate
without seeming insubordinate.
Calling the pharmacy.
Calling the lab.
Calling the doctor.
Calling families to come back, because…
it’s time.
Time for the surgery,
time for the baby,
time for the transplant,
time… to let go.
I forget, and yet I never will.
I look at them now and I feel a pull,
as if I am going to drag on
those rubber-soled shoes
and a fresh set of scrubs or a uniform,
that I’m going to clock in
with a piece of toast hanging from my mouth
and rush to the report room,
where the fairy tale of my next few hours
will spiel from a recorder
or someone’s tired lips,
telling me what my quest will be
while I hope I have the energy
to help my team win today.

(c) RCGA, 2020

Nurse’s hat and stethoscope.