On watching Mockingjay the day that Ferguson mourned
Ferguson on fire
—metaphors and other ways—
but I find myself inside a movie theatre.
The screen abursts with light:
revolution roils in divided Panem,
the dystopian we deserve
in our never ending fight.
We had our revolution
two centuries and change ago
and then our civil war
and then more and more and more…
Our Mockingjay robbed a store,
and wore a hoodie,
walked down the street,
and fought a cop,
and wasn’t pure or white or light.
Flames smear orange cross the screen
police cars burn and Katniss screams.
Peace keepers shoot into crowds
and the Capital is under siege.
Katniss Everdeen and Michael Brown:
these are the symbols of our fight,
but here no bloodless shots can be fired
every bullet means another black man’s life.
Black hands, white guns, fists
pound. Symbols don’t suffice.
When is murder not a murder?
When the dead man’s face is black
and a badge rests gunman’s chest.
I know all this to be true
But what am I to do?
I can tweet and twit and woo
but for Michael what will this do?
I want an enemy at which to point a gun,
an other to antagonize and fight.
We need an enemy that isn’t ourselves—
fighting for even odds feels self-defeating.
On the screen a make-believe heroine sings a haunting song
about a hanging tree and its strange fruit.
But we still have strange fruit twisting in our breeze.
This is harder than the revolution there will be no revolution.
I long for the clarity of Katniss’s struggle:
a President Snow against which to unite.
Instead all of our faces are white roses,
and our selves the bloody thorns.