Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Arizona, America?

We cast a shadow in the dark
the sun no longer wants to shine upon us
We as guardians of this world
purportedly with intelligence
and ‘humanity’ yet we treat each other
without empathy, without kindness
A country claiming to be inherent in
Liberty, freedom, fairness and equality
I guess these wonderful characteristics applies
only to the ‘ruling party’and if you look like us,
speak our language, act like us, think like us,
don’t ask anything of us, stay in your own land
then we’ll let you visit our country.

Should these words be inscribed at the base
of Lady Liberty in lieu of:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to
breathe free, the wretched refuse
of your teaming shore.
Send these, the homeless,
Tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp
beside the golden door."
E. Lazarus

I was born in Mexico brought here
by a woman, mother, that was given a passage
to residency and citizenship at no small
expense of trials and tribulations
Assailed by hateful, hurtful slings of arrows
we were a little darker in pigment, spoke a different language.
There was ‘kindness’ by some in spite of the campaign
at that time to ‘return the wetbacks’(circa 1957).
All is made easier when we dehumanize
those which we wish to discard or eliminate
through pejorative and dehumanizing names of race,
nationality and even society's, aged and infirmed.
I guess it’s called ’America’.