Given the gravity of the situation you might think this a whimsical photo. The Trayvon Martin verdict is disturbing in so many ways. It is truly tragic, and I don't want to sound naïve, but the questions I ask over and over are who approached whom? How can an armed aggressor claim self defense? And isn't the action of a Neighborhood Watch to do exactly as the term implies, and watch out for stuff? Logic dictates that if you see something you say something and the guy Zimmerman did, he called 911 and they told him to back off. Did he? No. How can he claim self defense? People in this country think that by turning a blind eye to race we can just make it go away, when in fact just the opposite is happening. We empower the racists, gay bashers, and anarchists by our collective denial. No one has the right to this power, yet we surrender it freely by simply ignoring the facts. No one wants to believe they are the racist. Everyone wants to believe they are in the right all the time. All this is but a long preamble to a poem I want to publish.
DENIAL
It is one of
those first steps...
THE first of those
first steps---
People get stuck
in first
All The Time
.
