The powers that be
are not
just
complicit, not just
intentionally
ignorant
nor striving for
plausible
deniability.
They are habitually,
sadistically,
nakedly
the incendiary device,
accelerant, the tinder,
the vise
confining not with
just intent
but
with a casual knee
or a baton
swung
at heads deliberately,
with tear gas and
“less-lethal”
ammunition—bean
bags and rubber
bullets—
fired at faces left
thunderously
bruised,
at ribs and backs and
thighs gouged
bloody
assaulted, broken,
and drawing out
the long
rope of history that
swings from the
black limbs
of a country tree.
They are not
just
dutifully keeping the
peace, protecting
and serving,
are not content to wield
the authority
at their
disposal but insist
on supremacy,
that they
dominate the streets,
the citizenry.
We:
those they see
as less than,
nothing
more than commodity,
revenue, machinery,
disposable
targets. See how the
powers that be
fearfully
hunker down, then flee
the building
storm
in a reign of pepper spray,
flash grenades, shields
and clubs,
amid shouts—“Get back!”
“Stop resisting!” “Light
’em up!”—
how those powers that be
expediently declare
an assembly
unlawful, a threat to property
all in the name of
that one Me.
But their powers are only
those we the people
consent to
and which we grant
in the interest of
our Liberty,
our Happiness, and all our
Lives, we being the
governed, especially
the forgotten We, the
invisible and racially
profiled We, the silent
We, the unjustly jailed
We, the immigrant and
indigenous We, the
desperately poor We,
the hunted and
brutalized and
murdered
We.
For there will be no justice nor
peace until they and he
concede that
We are
the Powers That Be.
