Sitting ducks at the superdome
By Claire Carew
One day in America the dirty secrets were revealed
Hurricane Katrina, Neglect and the Levee broke
New Orleans August 2005
God bless America
African Americans herded into a superdome,
Lying, dying in darkness waiting to be rescued,
Waiting for the descendants
who captured their ancestors into slavery,
Forcing them in shackles ashore
on the waters to the Americas,
Cramped tight on ships where many died
of lack of food and water.
Waiting they sit in the super dome,
Cramped tight dying of lack and food and water.
Surrounded by the dirty sewer
swamp waters of New Orleans.
Without electricity, air conditioning broken,
no one in authority “It is a free for all.”
Backup toilets and no running water,
The stench forces the soldiers to wear masks,
Afraid to enter the washrooms that stinks
of human waste and thugs
People resort to defecating in the open area
of this here super dome.
Outside water knee deep, corpse floats
and disease abounds,
Dehydrated in sweltering heat they wait,
Sitting ducks herded into a hellhole
controlled by men in army fatigues and guns,
Children cry old people die, thugs shoot
Women exhausted holding their babies
Men wandering, yelling,
futile attempts whose fruits bear nothing,
having lost their instincts to protect and to survive.
Sitting ducks hold up in America.
People scramble for food, water and diapers
from closed stores,
The looters raid the stores for guns and CDs,
Miscued priorities, thugs shooting and raping,
you can't shoot water.
Chaos and still they wait 4 days
before the first rescue convoy of trucks
arrive with food, water and guns.
''Point your guns down,'' the soldiers are ordered
The GUN only thing they know. The GUNS to take control.
.The plight, trauma and sadness has turned to anger,
Race and class are uttered off the lips of many,
Would it take so long to rescue Middle Class White America?
This lack of response is so blatant, bold -faced and racist
No love, No compassion,
The dirty secrets of America revealed.
We all see the poverty in their sunken eyes,
swollen bellies. Ill clad clothing on the sun burnt
backs of the black people
Where are the Indians, the Native Americans?
What happened to them?
Old black man with a cane limps with a flour sack,
as he makes his way to an airplane. 2005?
or is he a sharecropper in 1905
A slave visiting us through a time machine?
Dead woman sits in a wheel chair
with a blanket on her face,
someone’s mother, a grandmother,
teenager has a diabetic coma, ''I don't want to die like this.''
Families torn apart, values and dignity torn asunder.
Woman cries with her dead husband at her side,
wrapped in a shroud he survived the hurricane.
Died from lack of medical attention.
Middle age black man wails for his dead wife
holding his two young sons,
“she gone” … he retells the journalist
shooting the image,
his wife letting go of his hand,
his home splitting in two her last words… .
“you can’t hold me, take care of the kids and grand kids”
Hurricane Katrina, floods caused from neglect
broke the levee and revealed to the world
the underbelly of American society.
The Emperor’s naked, the under Bush speak the truth.
“that part of the world”
Isn’t New Orleans a part of America?
while Laura Lee speaks of how well
the White people in La la land
have managed to organize and stem the tide of chaos.
The hidden racist message plain to see…
A country vulnerable to natural and human disasters
that many with warped minds
are now fine tuning their plans on how to exploit
this new found knowledge,
as they work in the middle of the night
to bring American to its knees.
Sitting ducks are my brothers and sisters.
Sitting ducks are all of us.
We have lost our instincts to survive in the wild.
A wake up call to plan and prepare
for whatever dreams and nightmares may come.
Roof tops, attics and superdomes can’t be our answers.
Sitting ducks in the Americas.
