Sentencing
I stand outside
because I cannot go inside.
My mum has run out of love to give me.
If I desire so much to be purple
I could as well plant my own flowers.
Look at me outshining my country:
I didn’t kill a moth because it startled me.
I took it to a city of flowers,
wished upon its wings,
set them up against the wind,
from where my answers would soon come.
Before a begrudged audience,
I admitted am not a good man. I am selfish.
I have my father’s dentition, his regalia of shame.
Neither cheesing nor sadness can save me.
I smile, & the people who love me
are disappointed. How is it a dead man,
instead of laying still in his sleep, still
chooses to haunt us with his mistake?
They look at me, & it is not them who hurt.
It is the vase I filled with my love, hoping it
was everything my hibiscus needed to thrive.
I did not start a war I knew would be lost.
I took my kitten to the vet, read it the 1st Amendment.
I did not send a man to the moon to masturbate.
Bet, I dug my father out of his grave to mock him.
I did not evade tax.
I drank with a politician.
I poisoned myself to get rid of my father.
I am not a good man.
I’d sell my country for crumbs
if I ever had to protest for anything.
I am not a good man.
I sent a man to the moon in prose,
denied him in poetry. If I sent my father
flowers right in time for father’s day,
would they grow to obscure his memory of me,
or would their fragrance extinguish what is dead,
& set me free? I am a good man.
I made a man die for me, on the moon.
Become a Sustaining Donor This September
Between the reemergence of right-wing red-baiting and Donald Trump’s use of the chilling National Security Presidential Memorandum–7 to criminalize left political organizing, we’re seeing McCarthyism reborn before our eyes.
This assault on democracy cannot be ignored or wished away. Resisting it requires bravery in the face of threats and repression, a steadfast commitment to the truth, and the unwavering belief that we can—and will—overcome this darkness.
We must have an independent media that sets the record straight, unearths corruption and abuses of power, and advances a politics of justice and dignity for all if we’re to win this fight.
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Onward,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation
