Poem: Media Trauma

1)

This issue is dark vs light, not black vs white

but the media wants to start a race war

because it benefits them.

Media thrives on destruction, devastation, death.

Dividing up our nation to conquer us all.

Racism founded this country and made it prosper

with slave-owning founding fathers.

Asians are disempowered

our ornamental lives don’t matter

as the scapegoated peasants of the corona virus

our designated electoral value is zero

so our color is always invisible.

2)

Media replays the murder of George Floyd

over and over we watch him suffer

it programs us in looped murder.

Media fuels mob justice and retaliation

hatred and fear manipulate us blindly

just like they did with 9/11

we saw those shining towers fall like powder

we saw desperate bodies plunge to death

terrorism was Bush Jr’s excuse to start an oil war

to settle the old scores of his Darth Vader father.

3)

I question the timing of recent disasters:

Two dams flooded liberal Michigan—-

suddenly the armed protests to reopen stopped.

Fires burn down Fishermen’s wharf in San Francisco

to prevent new protests from starting?

Now the life or death crisis is in Minneapolis

where there’s a lock-down state of emergency

just when shelter-in-place was beginning to end.

If the Minneapolis trial ends like Rodney King’s

I don’t think the US can survive the divide again.

Justice is not won through rage or division.

Unity against racism should be the goal.

4)

Covid-19 has destituted the poorest among us

looting and rioting make it worse for them

and for us who were endlessly waiting

for the quarantined world to reopen.

We’ve all been imprisoned by our governments

who don’t know what they’re doing

or they’re nefariously pretending.

I think media is purposefully

drowning us with over saturation

like a mandatory execution viewing.

Every time they pretend they care

while they traumatize us with fear and hatred.

Interspersed with commercials

with soft pianos to reassure us

to keep buying their products.