It's the New York Times again because they didn’t think it was enough to tell me that 23 children died in India yesterday.
Insecticide in their school lunch.
News.
Now it’s Ryan Braun, former baseball MVP
And I quote, “linked to doping,
Suspended for rest of season.”
I don’t care about baseball
Let alone Ryan Braun
But I can’t help it.
I add his name to my list of disappointments.
Doping.
Lance Armstrong wins more trophies than I care to remember.
But he forgets that you can’t win if you’re not you.
He’s suspended.
Suspended in time, space because while people had been trying to cure world hunger and cancer,
He had been cheating to win.
Winning.
Bayside park, 2008
I get chills down my spine because
I’m not sure anyone has ever spoken to me in this way.
My dad, an ex-communist, although still bearded
Has trouble believing.
First there was Cuba.
Then Argentina, with its string of criminals aptly pretending to be politicians.
But I’m 15 and Barack Obama makes me feel like we have the power to change the world.
Fuck! He creates a “we.”
How long has it been since there was a “we” for the American adolescent generation?
You know how much shit has happened since Vietnam?
I consider stealing someone’s identity, just to vote.
And then a few weeks ago, we think Nixon screwed us
But he wire tapped a hotel room, not a country.
State.
Florida has never been my favorite state
“No, no. I’m not from there. I just live there.”
But then a black 17-year-old boy,
1 degree of separation.
1 degree.
Closer to him than Kevin Bacon
1 degree and his killer roams around the sunshine state
Even though he proudly wears the name tag he himself wrote,
The one the law itself allows him to bear
Murderer.
You hate this state? I live here.
I have to breathe his air.
Swim his waters.
My state is a systematic oppressor and killer.
What’s yours? The hummingbird state?
Florida.
Rick Scott is an asshole.
He looks like Voldemort
But he plays the part too.
The common core will raise achievement
But how can standards be raised
If our schools don’t have books
If no one ever told my sister that Oceania was the 7th continent
If my college counselor to this day
Can’t pronounce “Swarthmore”?
You know? That small liberal arts college 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia?
But don’t worry
Because Jeff Bush supports it too.
They are the common core of idiocy
If they think that making a new law
But hiring no new teachers
Will change the way we learn, the way we think.
Think.
Okay, maybe you're right.
Okay, maybe you're right.
Maybe spending 1.5 billion dollars since 2001 on wars that oppress
Will teach our children how to count.
Counting.
I can’t count them.
The number of disappointments I have felt since I started paying attention.
Maybe ignorance is bliss
But I can’t go back now.
