Wreck the Monoliths

Corporations eat a steady diet

of wage theft

and rise as monoliths

crushing homes and hopes in their wake

The stone slabs grow steel cables

Tentacles

meant to choke us into desperation

The monoliths tell us to be good little worker bees

and carry the weight of their excess

But when the prospect of spending a lifetime

ensnared 

becomes too much to endure

a whisper drifts

through the stifling atmosphere

rolling into a thundering shout 

until all of the bees

decide to do nothing

forcing stone walls to crumble into ash

and we all agree

to never build our prisons again

Image Description: a photograph of two large yellow sunflowers. A yellow and black butterfly sits on one of the sunflowers.

Life has been weird and uncertain lately. I’m fearful that the US will regress permanently and women and minorities have drastically reduced rights. It’s strange that my kids are growing up in a time where they already have fewer rights than I had as a teenager. I grew up in the 1990s, during the time where music festivals and ragged flannel shirts were plentiful. The rebellion against the status quo was rippling out from obscure punk bands and becoming prevalent in more mainstream music, across several genres. The trend of pushing boundaries rather than adhering to them was seen in the types of television, movies, books, and magazines gaining in popularity.

Books and music were an inspiration, a way to begin difficult conversations and gauge other people’s openness to the way our little part of the world was moving forward. I had always loved reading, and around the time I hit the high school, the library down the street from home expanded it’s offerings considerably. I found a plethora of books authored by women. In these stories, the female characters, whether they were heroines or side characters, were portrayed with actual depth rather than being shown as one-dimensional plot devices that propped up the male characters. I loved that these stories were written in a way where a woman’s curiosity and imperfections were not used as morality devices intended to instill fear and shut down questions. Sadly, the time has come again where books that pose such important questions are being frequently hidden from the people who seek answers.

There have always been book bans. Political leaders and ultra conservatives don’t want us questioning the laws and rules we’re expected to live under. They don’t want us to be able to find the right words to prove that they’re trying to create a society that benefits only them. Any version of history other than the sanitized, colonized words of writers who couldn’t begin to understand how much empathy they lacked, is being removed from the shelves and tossed in the proverbial fire, once again.

Some states now require parents to accompany their children, even kids old enough to drive and take SATs, through the library and authorize all books checked out. Imagine the information that will be lost, the staggering amount of opportunities for learning and progressing forward that will be crushed because information is being hidden with foolish fervor.

I miss the innocence of thinking progress and rights that had been fought for and won before and during my childhood would be guaranteed in perpetuity. I miss the security of thinking things would continuously improve for people who had often been denied opportunities in the past. While advancements in medicine and technology had been phenomenal, humanity’s capacity to lift each other up and care for one another does not seem to have evolved.  

During the past thirty years, I have completed a master’s degree, raised two children, changed careers to become a writer, and dealt with various health issues that gave me a glimpse at my own mortality. In all that time, my country has become increasingly bigoted and intolerant, and those perpetrating such ignorance have been noticeably more empowered by political leaders to speak out and enact laws that openly discriminate.

Power hungry billionaires and CEOs want more wage serfs to serve their purposes. In time, it won’t just be poor people, people of color, or women whose lives and chances for prosperity become drastically limited. After a while, the billionaire class will come for everyone but their own, even the millionaires. The line of inequality will continue moving and if we don’t scream about things and disrupt the process now, there may be no way out of the path of becoming human ants who have no time to do anything except work brutal hours before falling into an exhausted sleep, yet still barely make enough to survive.

I don’t know what will happen in the next few years or decades, but I can’t just sigh and accept the inevitability of living in a sad, subservient future. I will continue to write stories and poetry that shows truths and possibilities, I will make phone calls and show up in protest lines, I will ask questions, and I will find as many ways as possible to resist.