Naked and Alone – A Poem by Ron Olsen

Naked and Alone

by Ron Olsen

When one’s only sin

Is driving while black

It demands of us all

A slight glancing back

Beyond Donald’s hair

The rhetoric

And flair

Is the past

Aghast

Smashed

Trashed

As though it never happened

Lessons forgotten

Lying there rotten

 

Rodney King

The L.A. Riots

The burning

The death

The fear

The push to move beyond where we were

To what we could be

A commission’s plea

A consent decree

A plan to get us there

Beyond the hair

The rhetoric and fear

The cloud of deceit

And self-interest

 

All of it washed away by time

As though it never happened

Leaving us here

Naked and alone

In our childlike simplicity

Doomed to repeat futility’s call

Refusing to see the future

In our past

 

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Ron olsen is a Peabody and Emmy winning journalist and occasional poet who lives in Bel Air, Maryland.   More of his work can be found at http://workingreporter.com/poetry.html and at workingreporter.com

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