12:01

12:01

At 12:01 P.M. on January 20, 2017 an authoritarian ruler was sworn in as the President of the United States. David Duke and the members of the KKK rejoiced, White Supremacists celebrated, and NRA members fired rounds of bullets into the air. They believe that America has finally returned to the days of “white’s only” drinking fountains, African Americans in the back of the bus, gay men castrated and nailed to fence posts, and lesbian women raped. Shot glasses in the Wild West were filled with a concoction of white lightening. This was to assure that white only corn silks floated in the powerful white man’s brew. Then shouts of jubilation were heard across America’s South-land.

However, there were other noticeable events that received little or no attention from the mainstream media. A seismic activity shook the Lincoln Memorial and forms of condensed moisture rolled down the Washington Monument like teardrops. The words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. echoed across America, but Americans were too busy to listen.

 “We will not be satisfied until ‘justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.’” The words of Dr. King continued, “We cannot turn back,” which in present political terminology means we will not allow Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and a cabinet filled with bigots, to turn back the pages of American history.

Other important events occurred but were not noticed by the media. From the clay hills of Alabama, Jeff Sessions’ white drummers in the “Heart of Dixie” were not allowed to march across the Selma Alabama Bridge. The crossroads of Indiana were jammed with buses filled with gay boys and lesbian girls escaping the institutions of Conversion Therapy. Suburban Texans shouted at Ted Cruz quoting an unforgotten text from his holy book, “When the blind lead the blind, they all fall in the ditch together.”

At 12:01 I silenced the TV because I could watch the moment when America’s democracy was raped, and “they who know not what they do,” cheered. I sat at my desk and reread;

Neal Gabler’s “Farewell America.”

*********

         “Surrounded by darkness,

the only sound

was

      the beating of my heart.”

*********

Then I lay bleeding on the floor,

With Poe’s Raven quoting,

“NEVERMORE!”