Showtime - Jon Jackson

[Lawrence Robinson]

Showtime

Are we ready to step aside 
and let the other speak? 
Through our children? 
Through the ones 
they’ve said don’t matter? 
Through the ones that say, 
Me, Too to the vacant void? 

Through the ones that die every day, 
everywhere, around the world, 
to whom we say, We support you! 
as they fall? And they say, 
No, you never will, and 
No, you never have.
 
Are we ready to let 
another species awaken us 
to things we’ve always 
said we believe? 
The ones who say, You hypocrites! 
You who settled for 
soft beds, and something 
supposedly normal. 

Are we ready to say, Enough! 
as others have always said, 
time and again, with no credibility? 
Those whom we say we must help, 
but never do, not really?
 
Can we give up our comfortable lives, 
our dominion? We thought what we did 
so long ago made us worthy. 
But, are we willing now to lay it down? 
Our reputations, our careers, 
our safety? All on the line? 

Are we willing to take a stand, 
again, at last, after so many years? 
We thought we won back then. 
We’d done our part, 
and there was nothing more. 
So, are we?

If not, you know, 
our children will die, 
our spouses demeaned. 
Our dark selves will lie in the streets, 
dead, as thousands spit and sink 
into poverty and shit. 

And you. You will go on 
in your comfortable life 
until, one day, you 
are brought down, too. 

Believe me. Please. 
Our large work was never finished. 
It has, again, been 
thrown to the ground. 
And it will happen again, 
unless you wake up now.
 
Unless you say, Enough! Now! 
At what is in front of you.

	- Jon Jackson
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