america, the brutal
bless this rage,
boiling, seething,
at a nation that calls death freedom,
that builds altars to guns
then buries children in the same breath.
bless this grief,
a pit so deep it echoes,
where my scream comes back to me hollow,
because no one is listening…
not to the children,
not to the parents,
not to the ones bleeding out on classroom floors
waiting for a siren that never comes in time,
while their bodies go cold.
bless this fury that will not quiet,
at a world where fascists are martyred,
where neonazis are called prophets,
where hate itself gets a halo
while the innocent become statistics
and bloodstains are power-washed away
before parents even arrive.
this is america the brutal.
a land where bullets speak louder than ballots,
where profit outweighs bodies,
where the flag is just a shroud.
bless the despair that drags me down each morning,
as soon as I awake,
as I answer emails,
as if death does not surround us.
as if I am not haunted
by the sound of gunfire in my bones,
or the image of children crawling toward locked doors,
or the silence of those who could have stopped it
but chose instead to worship their idols of steel
and their pockets lined with gold.
bless this raw knowing:
that freedom for some
has always meant death for others.
that cruelty has always been carved into our laws.
that the empire always defends itself
with bullets and lies,
with propaganda wrapped in patriotism,
with blood-soaked flags waving over tiny caskets.
and beyond us,
bless the world’s brokenness we refuse to see.
bless the mothers in Gaza cradling dust and bone,
the fathers in Ukraine digging graves in frozen ground,
the children in Sudan walking past bodies just to find water.
bless the abandoned and ignored,
while we pretend our “freedom” absolves us
from reckoning with their horror.
bless the numbness that lets us believe
our comfort is not built on their blood.
and bless us,
God help us,
when we are left to live on
while others are cut down,
when we are forced to keep breathing
in a land suffocating on its own violence,
and numbness feels safer than feeling,
because to feel is to drown.
if there is any blessing left,
let it be this:
that rage does not leave us,
that despair does not harden us into silence,
that shock still burns our throats raw,
and awe at this cruelty still cracks some of our chests open,
that even in this pit,
we refuse to stop naming the dead.
knowing we may soon be among them.
may our fury be holy,
may our grief be relentless,
may our cries echo so loud
they split the heavens open.
this is america the brutal.
and we will not forget.