Waking Up To The News

 I don't write poetry much anymore. This is my first one this year. It has to do with Ferguson and the related incidents. It is a plea for peace through understanding and empathizing with one another.

Waking Up To The News

I guess I left the TV on.

I woke up to the news, and

appraised how much was real, how 
much was hype.There 
was a surprising chill,

rare in news today.

America had stirred,

while I was safe

in a dreamless sleep.

Most news today is just
an ad for argument.

This was too, 
at  least, almost, except that 
guns were now backing up the insults.

It's a little hard to say just what

was happening; There were two fronts,

angry and evidently, attempting

to break into or break out of an understated wall.

To this evaluation,

I'd like to add

the impression

of ions in the air,

heavy static.

And then, just

a few cold drops

of rain before

a second storm.

Now much more wind

and dissonant chimes,

lightning blasts from cameras

and a few guns.

A familiar scene,

almost,

except that it

was now

spilling out in pieces

of  cold blue light,

and  foreign.

I don't know how to say it.

I have an uneasy truce with emotion.

I'd rather reason,

but sometimes reason comes up dry,

or at least it doesn't absorb truth

fast enough, and leaves you all alone

in complex of situations.

Anyway, what was happening now

was all about feeling,

and I'm proud to say,  I felt it. 
I mean, "it doesn't take a weatherman

to know" that indifferent facades

often conceal pain, thirst for respect,

more than shattered dreams
and empty hopes, and that 
people caught in unrelenting heat

that only and continually meet  
frigid response,will,
eventually, rational or not, rally and 
pour their pain out on the streets
in bitter drops

It was a single incident in time

where history did not repeat, again,

just rhymed. (Thank you , Twain.)

But, underestimated agony

can immediately precede a revolution

if unaddressed. A simple solution ignored

can turn into a mess that decades,

and centuries will feel.

Don't get me wrong, now.

I'm just speaking of the past, but

 it's usually better to write the future now,

before it happens.

Revising history,  once it's written,

is a messy task, and can take years!

All I'm saying is, right now, the future

is only somewhat written, but pretty blank,

I mean compared to, say, waiting

until there's a knock upon the door at the Bastille.