It’s happening now
as you accelerate to cut that guy off on the thruway
with seven minutes to get to the parking garage
and that damn program is still giving trouble
and the intern’s off today and it’s eighty degrees already
It’s happening now
while cheerleaders are practicing the splits
bakers are pulling muffins out of ovens
old Italian guys are getting shaved at the barbershop
skinny women in Lululemons are checking their phones on line at Starbucks
boys are throwing spitballs at each other in the back of the bus
lonely blue-hair grandmas are watching game shows
families from south of the border
are three hours into their ten-hour workday
twelve-year-old kids bent over rows of strawberries
that go on forever to the blue horizon and purple mountains’ majesty
homeless people are talking to themselves
because nobody else listens
as they drag their shopping carts
from the underpass to the park
to stake out a spot in the sun because this land is your land
and people with jobs are squinting at spreadsheets
or ringing up junk food at Wal-Mart checkouts
or busting suds at greasy spoons
or saying no on the phone to sick people with inadequate insurance policies
people without jobs are still asleep on their brother’s uncomfortable couch
It’s happening now
while you are eating bad-for-you sausage pizza at lunchtime with Latisha
dishing bout crushes and how bout Friday night, you up for it?
and WTF, it’s one-thirty already
and wait, I gotta have a cigarette
It’s happening now
an engineer from Telangana is being shot down on a barroom floor
because a disgruntled drunk wants someone to blame
a quiet black boy is being hanged from a tree
because he’s a Muslim or that’s what it looks like
to some hateful low IQ self-pitying racist
because he never hurt a fly, or anyone else
and hundreds of Jewish kids and mothers and fathers
are being evacuated from schools and community centers
because of bomb scares
a Latino father who’s lived here twenty years
is being handcuffed and stuffed into a prowl car
in front of his children
for no particular reason on this particular day
because he got a couple of back tickets he couldn’t pay
bad hombre for sure
It’s happening now
while you are yawning in front of news at ten
as the dryer runs out its cycle
and the neighbors argue out the back
and the cat wants in
It’s happening now
girls are being told they’re stupid, worthless, ugly sluts
women are being shouted at and stalked and beaten
and killed in a red fury of self-righteousness by vicious men with guns
people of color are being harassed, arrested, locked up, done to death
Muslims are being incorrectly identified by ignorant fools
bullied, victimized, and deported
swastikas are being spray-painted on temple walls
because you know the Holocaust never happened
Natives are being betrayed
and stomped into the ground all over again
by the unscrupulous agents of our unprincipled government
starving to death out there on the edge of the prairie, Garrison old boy
you’d think they would give up but they never do
having nowhere else to go
and this land is their land
a fact we conveniently forget most of the time
and gays are being shoved in the hall at school
yelled at in the street and denigrated, raped
and beaten in the alley behind the bar
poor people are being overcharged, evicted, cheated,
left on the side of the road when the car breaks down
passed over when the choices are handed out
bankrupted by a broken bone, a divorce, a mistake on a form
the sick, the disabled, the mentally ill, the old
are disregarded, told they’re garbage, worthless
ready for recycling except we don’t bother to do that here
it’s too much trouble and who cares
about the earth, our mother, or each other, or the future, or our children
who cares? It’s get rich now
and devil take the hindmost, the straggler, the one who
if you listen to our leaders simply didn’t try hard enough
to make the grade
it’s how we roll
It’s happening now
while you are sleeping, badly like most of us
with horrid dreams you can’t remember in the morning
It’s happening now
as morally deficient hollow men in suits
stay late at the state house
making deals and passing bills
that swell their coffers
and appropriate your vote and steal your choices, shrink your paycheck
and impound your children’s chance at what was once called education
how to think and reason,
and your union, and your pension, pilfered,
and permit their paid thugs in their army duds
to violate or lock you up at any time the day or night
if you are in their way or just because they feel like it
or on a technicality – your bad you didn’t read the small print, sucker
and then take away your right to even say out loud or god forbid in print
in black and white the names of all their crimes
It’s happening now
Gillian Whittle is an artist and an emerging writer of poetry and nonfiction. She created “The Dreamer’s Art,” a workshop that focuses on healing and the enhancement of creativity through a dreaming practice. She is currently at work on a memoir about dreaming.