Imbalance

March 17, 2023 ~ Kenneth P. Gurney ~ Leave a comment

Your star-spangled tongue
twisted red, white and blue
around each utterance.

At the same time
your originalist mind
worked to replace

all of the amendments
after the ten
in the bill of rights.

Safe with your 401k
over a million dollars
you thought slavery

the province
of those poor people
unable to pay their bills.

In your mind
it would be the destination
of every asylum seeker

and anyone convicted
of felonies
no matter their color.

Your capitalist mind
translated everything
into property.

So much so
you never had children
due to the expense.

postscript

My latest collection, Far Away Right Here, is available in print. Dianne and I cherry-picked all the poems I wrote in 2022 to create this collection. If you like this poetry blog, purchasing a copy is a good method to support this effort and assist me in paying the yearly internet fees.

Beneath Our Feet

September 25, 2022 ~ Kenneth P. Gurney ~ Leave a comment

No one I know
has ever given a grave
as a Christmas present.

I assume you wear scrubs
and turned your car’s engine off
before the hospital.

I invented this coring machine
that extracts holes
for placing the dead standing up.

I imagine you singing
in the surgical theater
hands moving like a pianist.

Property has become so expensive
there are no new cemeteries
and the old ones are three deep.

Lack of Consent

September 17, 2022 ~ Kenneth P. Gurney ~ 2 Comments

A man trades two slaves for a horse.
I do not have to tell you about his Mississippi accent.

I do need to relate to you that he asked not one question
about how the receiver of the two slaves
would treat them

while the man with the horse sought assurances
the horse would be treated well.

We never think of a horse or a cow as a slave.
Or whether our treatment of them
will affect our entry into the kingdom of heaven.

The owners who argued slaves were livestock property
never stood trial for the crime of bestiality
no matter the numbers of mulatto children underfoot.

Or were arrested and tried for rape
for those owners who argued slaves were merely lesser people.