#notapoem — just a rant

Not a poem. Not an essay. Just a rant.

#notapoem Again. Or is it still? A continuing thing, blood flowing into blood into blood. Across borders. Beirut. Paris. Mali. Belgium on high alert. Syria in chaos. Jews stabbed on Tel Aviv streets. Palestinian homes bulldozed and bombed. Iraq & Afghanistan. Libya. Ferguson. Baltimore. Michael Brown & Eric Garner. Sandra Bland. Tanisha Anderson. Tamar Rice. White supremacists target blacks, Jews, Muslims. Shoot up churches, mistake Sikhs for Muslims, assault them on the streets. Presidential hopefuls stoke fear; xenophobes call for closed borders. Trump channels Goebbels, calls for Muslims to register with government, backs away. Media doesn’t blink, rides the tide, stokes the fire. Bombs level buildings. Bombs fall from planes. It’s simple, a friend writes. Life’s simple. They want to kill us, she says, ask the mother of someone who died on 9/11. Ask the mother of the Syrian child found dead on a Turkish beach. Or the 11-year-old Iraqi orphan. Ask. Ask. Ask. #instagramessay
A photo posted by Hank Kalet (@newspoet41) on

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Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

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