Poet Maureen Medina directly engages the dialogue and slogans of MAGA supporters, confronting the double standards and ironies of their (unjust) cause. Responding to their narrow, inflammatory language, she reworks their words into a new, more inclusive message.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Life and Liberty

 
America is under attack
 
Let us pray
 
In the name of the father, the son and the Holy Spirit
Please God, protect the supremacists
MAGA terrorists, better known as patriots
Alt right, white is right
To hell with their colored compatriots
Camp auschwitz, erase the indigenous
6 million wasn’t enough
4 centuries and counting aren’t enough
Insurrection wasn’t enough
 
Impeachment wasn’t enough
 
Let’s ask McConnell
Blue Lives Matter except at the capitol
USA, KKK, parlay
What did the Fox say?
It’s all on Parler
 
They say All Lives Matter
Except the black ones
Except the brown ones
Except the female ones
Except the trans ones
Except the queer ones
Except non-human ones
 
All Whites Matter
This isn’t the America they know
Born of justice and peace for their kind
But there is no justice, no peace
When we are murdered in our sleep
When we say we can’t breathe
When our necks are crushed by knees
Gunned down wearing hoodies
Gunned down buying candy
Destroyed for existing
 
Systematic genocide
Stand back and stand by
Orders by 45, who’s now been impeached twice
Stop the steal
Yes, stop the steal
Stop stealing the peace of a fairly won election. Concede. We chose Biden.
Stop stealing lands and identities and calling it colonization
Stop appropriating our culture, our grief, and calling it assimilation
Stop stealing our dignity - or attempting to - because that’s straight up degradation
Stop your stealing, suppressing, and sedition
 
Stand back and stand by
Orders by 45, wholly incapable of abiding by Democracy
Incite all the proud boys and girls
Grab ‘em by the motherfucking pussy
Including the first female VP
Oh, Harris. They want the sugar without the spice
 
You are the first in the house but not the last
Shatter the glass
There is no ceiling
Let’s move forward
Please, no blasts from the past
No more mass deportation
No more mass incarceration
Let’s change the system where the currency is our lives
 
Change the climate from ICE to FIRE
Because we’ve been hungry long before the strike
And if hate is all we’ve got
Where does that leave our melting pot?
Scorched with gunshot residue
 
This election can’t just be another shot in the dark
Enough with the oligarchs who condemn anarchy while inciting violence and patriarchy
 
In a country
Divided by rhetoric that fits in a 280 character limit
There are no filters, there are no limits
Tweet-sized FASCISM.
 
Shhhh, shhhh.
Can’t we all just get along?
Left, right - Let’s put aside our differences because we are all very special.

 
Go home. I love you.

©Maureen Medina – 2021

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Maureen Medina is an advocate for both human and non-human animals, and asserts that all oppression is connected. In alignment with the idea that none of us are free unless all of us are free, Maureen has created an initiative called Leave in Peace (LIP), which focuses on the human victims of animal agriculture. To learn more, please follow them on Facebook (Leave in Peace) and Instagram (@leave_in_peace), and visit linktr.ee/LeaveInPeace.

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For the first 100 days of the Biden administration, this website will feature a new poem of What’s Next!? These pieces can be calls to action, calls to attention, or calls to anger. They will light the way and guide the fight. They will get us moving and keep our momentum. They will be filled with hope, with anger, with sorrow. They will get us into good trouble and point out the trouble we need to stop. They will be polished gems, or rough-cut drafts of rage, or in-process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered.

#100Days100Poems of What’s Next!? wants your poems, your prose, your visual art (photos, drawings, sculptures), your music, your short films and animations. Interpret the theme as broadly as you’d like.

If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with your visual art (as .jpg or .pdf) or your poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. Include a short bio (2-3 sentences) and social media/website information. All rights remain with the author. Please address any formatting preferences in your email. Waxyandpoetic.com will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day beginning 20 January 2021.

Read, follow, share, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems !