I wanna write something meaningful
When my pen touches paper
Or my fingers touch the keyboard
I want a beautiful poem to be my reward
I wanna get lost in the richness of lines
And softness of rhymes
And the beat and metre and rhythm
Oh the rhythm
That jumps from every syllable
Like the pulse through my veins
But I don't wanna get side-tracked
Stuck in a conversation about the finer points of a beautiful poem
I wanna say something
Discuss the nature that is hypocritical
Of anything remotely political
And how that problem is neither remote nor isolated
And I could talk around it
Not mention any names
But my need to eradicate ignorance
Trumps political correctness
Donald J. Trump
Like a spoiled child who cries enough
He got what he wanted: the White House
An orange man who’s turned the United States Into White versus Black
No, wait. Scratch that,
Into white versus any minority
Pushing the agenda, no longer hidden, of white supremacy
Made the White House, an open house
A club
Replacing an administration with comedians... and it’s certainly funny
Because ignorance should be the enemy
But that’s his closest ally
His greatest weapon
And I watched millions of people weep on international TV and all of a sudden
The only statements I hear are:
“I never voted for him!”
“He’s not my president!”
And those who voted for him are silent
Asphyxiated by their own regret
.
Poem of Revolutionary Beauty
9
Sound familiar?
Well let’s reset
See America’s recent political upset
Has overshadowed our own woes
Or have we already forgotten
Platform promises to deliver in 100 days?
Cuz I’ve waited and I can count a hundred ways I’ve been disappointed
Let’s talk IMANI
Youth as trainees granted the opportunity
to work
All well and good, but life is a cycle
And at the end of this cycle
They are shuffled out of the deck to be placed back into the box of unemployment
And meanwhile we expect to see economic development
But we have to fight for a 3% increment
And who needs job security?
Teachers turning in optimal performance
And still can’t receive permanence
And we’re expected to overlook
The ministry’s gross incompetence
And what of the nurses, working tirelessly and getting paid in curses
The Hippocratic oath has their tongues tied
Even while the minister tells lies
Oh sorry, informs the nation
Spreading hearsay on every news station
Calling it conflicting reports
But you know what, enough of that
Cuz 6 minutes is not enough to address all of those alternative facts
So that’s another poem for another day
Because those cries have been made before, but the only time anyone is willing to listen seems to be just around election
Or maybe that’s just my observation
So let me shift gears
Is it me, or have the investors disappeared?
Grenadians seem to forget their problems every February
But since when have we become a people
With long hands and a shallow memory?
.
I wanna talk about education
And why it is students can’t learn more about the Grenadian revolution
I mean I’m angry
The students never received their technology.... or maybe the tablets referred to were actually medicinal…
We’re content to be yanked about by ball and chain at the mercy of a government
Whose representatives aren’t fit to represent shit
Unless they could somehow benefit
And I laugh because I remember saying this a couple years ago
A couple months ago
A couple weeks ago
A couple days ago
And I’m not just talking about practice
See the fact is
We’ve been had
Getting shortchanged
By a government that promotes change
But has never changed their approach to the problem
And I can’t even say it’s been a commendable effort
Because there’s not much to show for it
Nothing more than a few unfinished projects that reflect our abject disappointment
And that’s a hard pill to swallow…
Oh sorry, my bad,
A hard tablet
I wanted to write a poem that was beautiful
But I know some people receiving this are uncomfortable, unable to appreciate the poem’s aesthetics
Just because the content expounds on politics
But now is not the time for feel good poetry
It’s the time for poems of revolutionary beauty.
~ K. John
.