Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

For Rev. King

On this day
I think about
the poor of Katrina,
the lame and blind soldiers of Iraq,
and the Pakistani’s,
one moment standing innocently on their land
and the next,
lying in graves.
I think about the little children in this country
and their single mothers struggling to get by.
I think about the homeless I see on the streets
and the black woman I saw at the Kroger today
buying as many lottery tickets as she could get her
hands on.
I wonder where Martin Luther King and his dream is
in all of this.
I hear his voice,
booming like a trumpet in Memphis
calling us all home.
I hear him
telling us that we can reach our dreams,
that he has seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
I hear him
and I want to believe him,
but I am worried with all that I see.
We need King now.
We need someone with vision.
We need someone who will stand up
to the man
in office
whose only dream
is a foul smelling nightmare,
played out with human soldiers
instead of the toy ones he played with as a boy.
We need someone who respects life
and the dignity of all.
We need King.
Oh Reverend King,
Reverend King,
where are you?
If you were here
there would be marches in the streets
over what our country has been turned into.
If you were here
New Orleans would be being rebuilt right now
instead of decaying into a hell of greed and corruption.
If you were here
we wouldn’t be in Iraq in the first place.
And there damn sure wouldn't be a ‘W’.
We would be talking about building dreams
not tearing them down.
If you were here
we would be proud.