What Will You Do?

My country has turned to piracy now,

deposing a foreign leader to ravage

his country’s resources.

*

Modern-day conquistadores,

plundering oil and gold and eyeing

anything else worth stealing.

*

So I took my guitars,

got them all restrung in preparation

for the songs I’ll have to write

*

to document this new unholy America.

Guthrie taught us those machines

kill fascists, and we live in a fascist time now.

*

We’re gonna need all the guitars we can get.

*

I saw an American citizen get shot,

sitting in her car, hands where her

murderer could see them,

*

because she was trying

to keep her neighbors safe from

illegal arrest and detention and deportation.

*

White as a lily she was,

a mother and a wife and a poet,

a human being just being human.

*

So I cleared off my writing desk,

dusted down the corners,

changed the lamp bulb.

*

I sharpened up my pencils,

refilled all the ink in my pens,

laid out my little notebooks.

*

‘Cause we’re gonna need all the poetry we can get.

*

I will not turn away.

I will not shut up.

I will not go along to get along.

*

I’m one man writing one poem,

showing you the state of a

dying dream,

*

and fighting to keep it alive.

I’m one man right here, right now,

but I know I’m not alone.

*

I know we outnumber the

masked brownshirts masquerading

as law enforcement,

*

I know there are more people

like me than there are sad,

angry, oh so terrified people like them.

*

There are more of us than them.

*

There are more of us than them.

*

There are more of us than them.

*

So now I ask:

*

When the curfews begin

and the roadblocks start,

when uniformed men march the streets

*

at night flashing lights into your homes,

when they ask to see your phone when

you cross a county line,

*

or hold onto your passport

or license just while they

‘check something out,’

*

What will you do?