Poignant poetry from Theo Asterion

This is an important reminder that when we celebrate our freedom with weapons and reenactments of war and death we ignore and deny the suffering and trauma of so many of our marginalized humans and more than humans.

From dear brother Theo:

I don’t hear freedom tonight.

I hear gunshots punctuating the dark like sightless stars,
ravening thunder of war machines,
each crack the impact of whips on black flesh like twisted spines,
each flash slicing open the skin of the sky.

I see immigrant women drinking water from toilet bowls
in 2019, sewage swirled like galaxies you could drown a nation in,
if it were still breathing.

I see the dream of Democracy fallen to the earth,
ashen as a stillborn child, I see handprints of blood staining

America the Beautiful from sea to burning sea.

There is no freedom here,

only the screech of stolen innocence from infants throats, tiny
hands reaching through barbed wire. “Help me”
is the same in every language

and it smells like smoke and it sounds like cataclysm,
for America does not die quietly.
She is too proud for that. She’ll set the whole sky on fire

before admitting she was wrong.