I Felt Blue
For each
blow of the billy club
that smashed
into the small
of my back
a seed of hate
was planted inside me
One-hundred blows
all attempting to beat the
black off an
unarmed man
When it stopped
I was more black
but the love was beaten out of me
I felt blue
—-
With the increase in people participating in the Occupy movement, we’ve also seen an increase in brutality against unarmed American citizens who are protesting in a public space for their beliefs. From physical abuse, to tear gas into crowds of unarmed people, to pepper spraying students sitting down, the violence is definitely getting worse. So what happens when you can’t beat the will of the people? Will you kill them to suppress them? How far will you go and how do you look at yourself knowing you’re attacking the American citizens you were sworn to protect… or were you?
Posted on November 19, 2011, in Poetry and tagged American, Citizens, Occupy, Pig, Police Brutality, Students, Unarmed, Unjustified. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
39 
There comes a point in which The State ceases to care about freedom of assembly and remembers that it cares more about having a quiescent population. That point usually comes when a bloc of people start to realise that it is not simply to assemble freely that matters, but to use that assembling as part of a process of ground-upwards, grass-roots decision-making. That is the suppressed component of democracy, the suppressed part of of every revolution in history as power-cliques form and seize the whip. It happened in the English Revolution in the mid 17c, in the French Revolution, in the Russian Revolution, in the Spanish Revolution of 1936, and it is happening to the ‘Cairo Spring’ right now. Don’t believe that it didn’t happen in the American Revolution too – what you are left with is ‘freedom, but only if you buy our neat stuff and only if you meekly put an X on a piece of paper every four years’.
Rant over. Thank you.
M
__________
Marie Marshall
writer/poet/editor/blogger
Scotland
http://mairibheag.com
http://kvennarad.wordpress.com
This is such a wonderful poem. Great economy of words.