I had a dream of nuclear war,
Of bright blasts and mushroom clouds.
And in the part of the dream
The world after the war,
Into superpowers.
I suppose that’s to be expected
When you fall asleep watching
A Marvel movie and scrolling on social media,
When the American president
Sends masked agents into American cities
To barge into the homes and workplaces
Of hospitality workers and day laborers,
Targeting supposed “alien enemies.”
I’ve seen this movie before,
Set in 1930s Germany, etc, etc…
It’s a familiar story,
Yet we pretend its new.
And those of us living through it
Are left with a question: What can I do?
Angry social media posts
Feel like yelling into a void (or echo chamber).
I could call my congressman,
But he is a Democrat,
And Democrats appear to have little power.
Protests are important,
But honestly they sometimes feel like
Performance meant to salve
The conscience of attendees,
Rather than enact real change.
Yesterday, on Martin Luther King Day,
On the way to the California African American Museum,
Sam and I drove past
The National Guard Armory in Fullerton.
In normal times, these cold weather months,
It was used as a homeless shelter.
But now it has been reinforced
With high new fences topped with razor wire.
We saw a tank-like vehicle parked,
As if preparing for war.
But war on whom?
Today on C-SPAN I watched
As Col. Lockjaw aka Greg Bovino,
Leader of the New American Gestapo,
Called the actions of ICE agents
“Legal, professional, and moral.”
He held up a few photocopied papers
Containing mug shots,
Making the case that they are
Only going after “criminal aliens.”
Not a word about Renee Good,
The mother of three murdered
By an ICE agent,
Or the American citizen dragged
Half-naked out of his home
Into the freezing Minnesota winter.
And meanwhile, the Minneapolis
Chief of Police tells of 911 calls
Flooding in with reports of peoples’
Rights being violated–
Even those of off-duty cops
(Who all happened to be people of color).
We’ve seen this movie before.
And meanwhile, what can I do?
I make a couple snarky social media posts,
Then go to a bar and sip vodka
And write a poem.
And then I put on my headphones
And listen to a City Council meeting
And scroll through newspaper archives
From 1954, slowly making my way
Through local history,
Hoping that in the past I may find
Answers for the present and the future.
In 1954, for example,
The government launched
A mass deportation called “Operation Wetback.”
They were more straightforward,
If no less cruel, back then.
I had not learned about this in school.
Perhaps, in resurrecting these long-buried stories,
I may hold up a testament to past failures,
To shine a little light
On the vast darkness that is American history.
Maybe if we learn new stories,
We might be forced to reckon
With the truth of our past,
Not the comforting stories we tell ourselves.
Truth be told, I had another dream.
One in which I was trying to reckon
With my own personal history,
Of growing up in an evangelical church,
Where religion and politics
Were dangerously mixed.
About how some of my elders,
Whom I respected,
Refused to see the poison in the well
That we all drank from,
Of anti-gay, anti-abortion rhetoric
And of a slow-gestating voting bloc
That would welcome a charlatan authoritarian
As God’s Chosen Man.
Thankfully, a nervous breakdown at age 20
Predicated a slow separation from that world,
But I can’t shake the shock of recognition
That many whom I held up as paragons
Of Christianity would embrace something much darker.
We are the products of our past.
And the older I get, the more I see
We all have a dark crooked line
Running right through us
And the only escape,
If there is to be any escape,
Is a frightful reckoning with the truth.
Of the past. Of the present.
It’s tempting to slink into the cocoon
Of comfortable stories,
But sooner or later we all
Have to face the truth,
As ugly and painful as it is.
