"It Looked Like Fire" (National Poetry Month poem-a-day) Day 21

Written by Bruce A. Pandolfo
4/21/2017

Ed respectfully attended the Ferguson protest out of curiosity
Appropriate...
everyone was outraged over “what killed the cat”
Things were getting curioser and curioser.
He was immediately enveloped in the waves of sadness.
Drowned in the undertow of the overtones of
anger, pain, mourning at the injustice.
He'd experienced nothing like it and wished he hadn't had to.
More cops showed up.
Robotic riot gear, clockwork synchronization.
Almost inhuman in their actions.
But that's why we were protesting wasn't it?
Inhumanity in cops' actions
“Go home”
the riot police chanted.
“This IS our home!"
the protesters reminded them.
Then as if forgetting that this demonstration
was responsible for enough tears shed.
The police start tossing their smoke-billowing
alligator-tear-gas canisters
unforgiving and unforgivable
into the crowd...
Into the family of families.

Robert makes a cameo with his camera,
He's got to get shots for the Dispatch,
There are headlines and deadlines to make!
As he's observing the scene from the sidelines;
the impassioned droves, the cold insectile rows of police,
with shields and helmets that rendered them anthropomorphic beetles.
Robert applies his lens' focuses and struggles with his own focus.

Both Ed and Robert's ears quake
in the wake of a deafening grenade-bang
as yet another gas canister is launched.
A blazing asterisk like a coke- can containing a star
that arches into the crowd with a contrail tail of smog.
It lands with a hiss and a clank at Ed's feet.
Ed jumped back from the shower of sparks.
(it looked like fire)

[Robert's aperture winks]
Ed's adrenaline-twitch grip grabs the canister
[Robert's camera blinks]
Ed dreads the mist, dreads flying, he arcs his arm
[Robert's aperture winks]
Ed tosses the blazing billowing can blindly
[Robert's camera blinks]
Ed is immortalized vaulting the tear gas away from him,
obscenely lit in majestic defiance
his American flag shirt highlighted
by the hot spark of what was meant to disarm him.
He become an immortal visual while wielding
the smokey weapon that was meant to blind him.
Rob misses his deadline,
but hit the perfect moment.
Ed tries to escape,
the window to his rocking car
bashed in by one of the maddened police,
he is handled roughly and arrested eagerly
with sickly vindictive macho excitement.
Robert and Ed,
unwitting collaborators are both dejected
and unbeknownst to them, remarkably successful.
They become a Pulitzer-winning heralded symbol,
replicated as tattoos, murals, t-shirts, art renderings..
more importantly..

replicated as pride, defiance, justice, hope, strength. 


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