Bring Out Your Dead

Last edited Sun May 24, 2020, 03:50 PM - Edit history (1)

Robert Chancey: This poem is an attempt to understand a country that cannot even agree on the legitimacy of reality.

BRING OUT YOUR DEAD
PART I
In the
First
Civil War
Most
Of the American boys
We lost
Died
Not from gunshot
And shrapnel
Our soldiers
Were erased
By disease
PART II
The War
Officially ended
In April
Of 1865
A Spring
Of temporary peace
Before
It recommenced
In the hearts
Of those
Who loathe
Skin color
Equality
A just economy
PART III
The fury raged
In the banker
And the dirt farmer
The landlord
And the shopkeeper
The automaker
And the bus driver
The textile mill owner
And the factory hand
Choking
On the cancerous fibers
Of his daily labor
PART IV
The Second
Civil War
Began
When the anger
Spilled out
Of the ballot box
Eight years
Of a Black Gentleman
A Black Scholar
A Presidential Man
Who could orate
Like Lincoln
And sing
Like Al Green
PART V
He was
Too much uppity
For those
Who like
The hanging tree
A loud minority
Demanded
A Jim Crow landlord
A plantation rapist
A vulgar parody
Of white underachievement
A Northern carpetbagger
Who talks
And eats
And soils
The furniture
Of the Oval Office
Like a unregenerate cracker
Who just
Won the Lottery
PART V
The Second
Civil War
Began
As theater
A variation
Of the slave auctions
The howling mob
Was fed
The spectacle
Of children
In cages
Pornography
For those
Who love
Taco Tuesdays
But
Hate
Mexicans
PART VI
The mass murder
Began
In January
With espionage
Lives
Could have been saved
But
Traitors
Chose inaction
PART VII
Victory
Was declared
In April
155 years
After
The aborted peace
Of Appomattox
But
The casualties
Overwhelm
Our hospitals
In New York
And Mobile
No gunfire
Only
The smoky pall
Of a seething armistice
Hangs
Like a smallpox infected blanket
Over our divided nation
PART VIII
100,000 dead
The latest victims
In the unending struggle
To define
The United States
As a land
Of pernicious freedom
And unequal liberty
The fallen
Again
Killed
By a common enemy
A virus
We cannot see
And dare not name

-Robert Chancey-