Freedom Poetry Voices

By Kim Peter Kovac

[For Renee Nicolle Good and Alex Pretti]

We (many of us) are incapable of chopping through all that surrounds us to identify    

          what’s important to us, to look at, hear, attend to, empathize with, bear witness to.
We (many of us) ignore the documentation of ninety years of history and how   

          authoritarianism slimes its way to power in Germany as well as how many Italians   

          say that Mussolini might be bad but at least the trains run on time.

We (none of us) think our last words will be “I’m not mad at you, dude”, and “Are you  

          okay” before state-sponsored masked thugs murder us. 

We (not enough of us) are red-hot-mad that large portions of our government (including 

          Dear Leader) tell us not to believe our eyes about what happened.
We (many of us) grieve with their families and friends while we (too many of us) close 

         our eyes and reach for our cultish slogans, hats, and mix another Kool-Aid 

         cocktail.

We (more of us) are beginning to believe that sometimes, just sometimes, a moment 

         matters, and maybe we’ll remember Renee, Alex, and everything else and move 

         forward based on the truth that our government can’t save us from our 

         government, only we can. 

We the People.