Adieu
to a bastard of a year
whose father was no father at all
but a diaper they attempted to clean with a dishrag
and strapped to a mannequin
with the voicebox of a 10-year-old
whose mother did not protect him—
was perhaps unable to do so—
from the ills of the world.
Farewell
to another year of black throats crushed,
suffocated for all to see,
of faces scraped against concrete,
shot in their beds or left to rot in cells,
but also of those who balled their fists,
refused to be silent and took to streets,
who organized behind the scenes,
took to the ballot boxes and screamed.
Good riddance
to hordes of gnashing teeth between gingivitis-laden gums,
Whopper guts and confederate flags,
Boogaloo boys with happy trigger fingers
who comforted themselves with silky lies,
who bathed their skin in the oils of dead whale calves
and toasted Coors Lights as they downed their fill
of fascist tripe, Mussolinian entrails,
and thought they did it all in the name of the Lord.
Goodbye (but not quite yet)
to strangers seen as threats (more than usually),
whose very breath, a dangerous vector,
to third-world-country mills of polypropylene masks
that some viewed as signs of oppression,
that some clung to in hopes of staying safe,
that some scoffed at while their grandparents died,
that became an indicator of whose gaze extended beyond
the clippings of their own toenails
and whose was mired in solipsism that could not permit
of empathy to break their autistic fever-dreams.
(and hopefully) A tentative hello
to commutes to work that no longer need to exist,
to painfully waking up to social responsibility,
to digging our leaders’ heads out of the oil-sands,
to clean drinking water in Flint and on indigenous reserves,
to no longer tolerating that which can be changed,
to forgoing our opiates in the name of tears
that need to shed aloud.
