Speech

Obama at Osawatomie Kansas High School
A hundred years ago Theodore Roosevelt

The television cable costs so much per month
you can’t afford what rabbit ears don’t reach

In winter you can’t fish if the weather won’t let
you drive to Ottawa to see the Braves play

basketball. Now you don’t know what to do
with your newfound leisure but you worry

Obama says tax the rich but will never say
you should have made money beget money

Now you can’t find work nor will your children
Robber Barons are back more than before

The television tells people what they must think
you could see for yourself before despair

Every time he launches his words a little fear
must dry his lips being out where Kennedy was

Not in Kansas but in another place haters
took law to become beasts and murdered him

What will it be in fifty years
What happened the last fifty

Obama’s skin is black because his father’s was
His mother’s white skin from Wichita

Imagine the love and hatred that circulate
like oil to feed the fire the desperate require

Don’t imagine but find out what is true
at the end of the line that leads where here

is. This could be home. Its endless distances
and the dreams and the nightmares between.

(6 December 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander