A Week Of America's Shame by Juliet Thomas

 

Land of the Free or so they say

But this week it doesn’t feel that way

Where women’s choice has been taken away

And men in suits choose their fate, come what may

 

It doesn’t matter how it occurred

Their right to choose has now been deferred

With struggle, anguish and pain preferred

A girl or a woman’s voice, no longer heard

 

Was it ever a choice so easily made?

Hell no! There was always a price to be paid

With guilt and shame, and now more afraid

Punished and cursed, refused legal aid

 

And this is the year 2022

I can’t quite believe it, can you?

Pro-‘Conceived’-life they herald, is the victorious view

Yet gun laws NOT overturned, right on cue

 

They sell guns like sweets to those on the streets

Allow murder in schools, cannot change those rules

The red necks need the power of a trigger, to make them feel bigger

In the name of protection, America’s lasting infection

 

And, so as a woman and mother to a teenage girl

How do I explain the madness of this World?

It makes no sense, how can we be here

Curating more sexism, female despair, and a lifetime of fear

 

I thought we were progressing, with Black Lives Matter and Me Too

But America is regressing, can you feel it too?

We used to look up to the Land of the Free

The beauty of a sunrise above Liberty

 

Now dead children’s faces shape our TV screens

A familiar story while parents, silently scream

When will change come, when will something be done?

When will someone fire that loaded gun?

 

Now clouds are descending on a country bleeding out hope

Since the Trump years, it’s been on a slippery slope

I feel deep, knawing sadness for the people in turmoil

Shame now scorched deep, in fresh constitutional soil.

Note: This poem / rant was born out of many discussions with my teenage daughter this week. What makes it more upsetting is that it is / was a country that we love and have been on many holidays here, it saddens me what is becoming of it and sometimes writing is the best way to process these things...