We don't write poetry.
It happens.
It hits you in the face and
demands to be.

Its pieces bombard like pebbles
thrown by zealous winds.
It wakes you at two a.m.
frantic to be free.

Like soul longing for body
it floats about
filled with anguish
and yearning.

The world is a poem.
Walking among its words,
often unaware,
we breathe the empty spaces.

We are all scribes,
sometimes setting down
a verse or two.

But...

we don't write poetry.

It happens.

I keep replaying
Last night's scene.
An English man
sitting at a bar,
in a wealthy
side of town.

He was carrying on
with me about
The People
not having
a good reason
to carry a gun.

It's hard for him to see
why I strongly disagree.
I want The People
to fight for what they believe in,
and question authority.

It wouldn't be quite fair
if the law makers
and enforcers
had all the guns
and we had none.

Rebels are going to
have guns anyway,
but they call them criminals.
Then otherizing them,
making it "okay"
for them to be locked away
in 3x overcrowded cells,
for as long as they can keep them there.

Please keep explaining to me
why you,
who lives in a gated community,
are okay with your gun
in your locked safe,
but you're not okay with me,
who lives in the south end,
having a gun
on my hip
as I walk through
a littered park.

Or why it's not okay
for a women,
looking good
for a night out on the town,
to keep a gun in her purse
as she passes the downtown alleys
and begging homeless.

You're right about the terrorists.
They don't really exist,
but do you realize who
did bomb the towers?
Do you realize who is creating
the fear of black men, now Muslims?

Please keep telling me
that there's no reason
for a revolution.
That there's no good reason
For The people
to carry a gun.

There's nothing wrong
with fighting for what you believe in,
but blindly taking away
ones ability to fight back,
that's wrong.