Street Roots • August 11-17, 2017
Poetry
Page 13
Upholder
by Aileen McPherson
The Aftermath
by Eileen Vizenor
With life full of strife how do morals not
become trite, when death is a vestment
worn daily by a mind born of servitude, where
latitude like gratitude is excised by a being
who prided self as truthful despising lies, all
while forcing deception on those he chose
to have connection.
It was the day after May 4, 1979
and I woke with no mom
Hoping it was all a bad dream
But my heart was aching,
my eyes were swollen,
and my smile gone.
While lies unfolded a mind grew colder as body
continued to be battered, four more lives
would be shattered, contradicting laws that matter
for greed deplorable against familial craft, how
does one last before a mind burned, mortified,
crashed.
Will I ever smile again?
Will this pain in my heart ever heal?
I’m consumed with my loss.
Then I think of my dad.
He must be feeling as I do.
What about my siblings?
How are they holding up?
I must get out of myself so I can be there for others.
With every fiber of my being I am there for my family.
Put honesty before lies, other before thine, morality
is a perspective be objective, value truth,
elevate perpetuate solidarity for harmony’s
sake, we are great, despite past paths that
we have been made to undertake.
Upholders are we, fighting for rights that
should be, formed not of greed but through
truest equality, resist your past to make
a sustainable future that will last, lest
not we forget our deplorable past.
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