Tortured Ideals

Misinterpreted

Mislead

Perverted words

And tortured ideals

But who to trust

When they all disagree

On what’s a must

Some say “More freedom!”

Unless you are gay

Or a woman

Or black

Or brown

Others say

“Get out of the Middle East!”

“It’s not our fight!”

But what about that

Disastrous plane flight

And the towers ablaze

Am I in a dream

Or do we really have two sides

With no in between?

That’s my future your playing with,

By the way

My voice is drowned

In the volatile crowd

I don’t have money for a Super PAC

How are those legal anyway?

The concept is simply whack

I’m too young to vote

But old enough to know

This is a bad direction to go

Why don’t you all shut up

And look around

Before this all-out boxing match

Starts another round

 

Sides

I tried to find the most unbiased article I could for the Trayvon Martin case. Much harder than expected. I searched Trayvon Martin on the Miami Herald‘s and had to go page 34 before I found an article describing more or less the facts of the case, not the racist aspects of it. I wrote this poem more as a response to the reactions of Americans than as a response to the case itself. I don’t know if George Zimmerman is racist or not because I was not there when the shooting happened. This case has changed from one about seeking the truth to one about racial injustices in America. Perhaps this is therapeutic, but we must not forget what this case is really about, the unbiased version of it, and hope that justice is reached, whatever the side.

One side is white

And the other black

In the middle huddles red

Red is what happens

When black and white mix

Red is dreams lost

Red is lives whisked away

Red is the tears of yesterday

You’d think it’d be gray

That mixed stain of colors

Gray is what they should make

Black and White

White and Black

It makes sense

But humanity never has

So the red is still there

A stark reminder of prejudice

The blemish of a failed mass wish

A wall for those

Too something to mix

White and Black

Black and White

Both are colors

But not really

Both do exist

Fact acknowledged or not

Black and White

White and Black

Have much in common

More than they realize

It’s time for them to start

Relying on more than just their eyes

Indifferent Army

Carbon copies one by one

Built to kill and never stun

Forward they march

Through nervous streets

Responding to an unheard beat

One thousand soldiers of one mind

Actions effortlessly synchronized

No one can successfully retaliate

Against an army not fueled by hate

Crimes of logic not of passion

Executed in an orderly fashion

Fingers on triggers do not flinch

Black killer bullets never miss

Death seduces life with its metallic kiss

The cold hard truth out there to see

Is that logic and greed outweigh humanity

For every twenty guns there is but one open heart

For every healed soul there are a hundred red marks

Choking For Words

There is a Chinese girl in my history class whom I have become friends with.  She has only lived here in the states for a few years and all things considered is quite fluent. Today we had to read aloud in class and when it got the person before her, it hit me: What would she do? Her accent is rather heavy and she is very soft-spoken.  She started to read and I cringed as the other students snickered. It was all I could do to not slam their cruel faces with my textbook. For a country that encourages immigration, we are so mean to the immigrants once they arrive.

In my recent endeavors to learn Spanish, I have realized how hard it is to learn a new language, particularly one as irregular as English.  I have a new-found respect for the bilingual.

To me it seems like choking

Air supply beneath that of mere survival

Knowing so well what you want to say

Only once translated, it’s all twisted

The words don’t properly form

A new language has turned you forlorn

You cannot fit in

When you can hardly talk

And at your oddly said words they balk

Going out of their way to make it harder

Not even realizing that you are smarter

Because they can’t hear over their own laughter

That’s what it looks like to me as I watch

Her face says she knows she can’t belong

When the language she does know is all wrong

 

 

Midnight Murder

Five gunshots resonated in the night

Waking me up in a startling fright

I brushed it off, nothing could be wrong

But then I heard the ambulance’s song

And quickly proceeded to bite my nails

Thoughts of  a murder and all it entails

I made up a thousand stories in my head

Though nothing could mask the worry and dread

Not a mile from my home a soul just went dead

The ambulance resumed its death-tolling cry

As it lit up my neighborhood and charged right on by

Eventually I fell into a stiff-no good sleep

So scared was I to make a peep

The next morn I studied the news

But failed to find any useful clues

To a murder that last night had happened

Surely a disaster not deliriously imagined

Ban Censorship!!

– This is the poem I had on my blackout page yesterday.  I decided to post it again for those of you who may have missed it and also because the protest may be over, but the bill is still in existence and that is unacceptable.  My poem is applicable to this bill, but also to all other forms of censorship. As an avid reader, the banning of books has always been something that is especially wrong to me.

I was planning on choosing one quote as a representative for my feelings on censorship, but I could not choose, and here they all are:

“You can cage the singer but not the song.”  ~Harry Belafonte, in International Herald Tribune, 3 October 1988
“The paper burns, but the words fly away”.  ~Akiba ben Joseph

“Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.”

― Mark Twain

“When you ban a book you ban an idea, and that’s communism.”

– Andrea Z. 🙂

Hold back the curtain

Don’t let the wretched thing fall

Come to freedom’s SOS call

Ideas are truth and they are free

How dare they hide them so the people can’t see

Writer’s, join your hands

Preserve the freedom of this land

We are the backbone

Of every revolution

We are the first ember

Of a raging fire

Sing with this written choir

Raise our standard ever-higher

Quills raised and held in an iron-tight grip

Ban the despot that is censorship

What Is Shown Versus the Hidden Unknown

I hate you

I just want to talk

You killed my heart

Once upon a time you made it grow

You made a fool of me

I fell hard for you

The heart-tears you put me through

The smiles you put on my face

You cheated on me

I still want you

I hope you’re damn happy

I’m not

You don’t deserve me

I’m the only one who understands you

You’ll never hear from me again

If I call, will you answer?

It was all your fault

And mine too

You’ll never find another like me

No one makes me laugh like you

Good riddance

I weep for us

I wrote this because we so often put on that angry face and hide how we truly feel because we don’t want to be considered pathetic.

Many of my love poems have been in existence for several weeks, I have to wait to publish those because I have to get over the feelings.

Andrea Z.