"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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