The Hamlet Project

I can’t help it. I’m obsessed.
I can not stop reading and watching coverage
Of the protest events at UC Davis.
I’m thinking of it again now
Because I’m impressed with Marcellus – Who knows when to disobey an order –
And I’m thinking about the military and the militarized police
In riot gear
With guns and visors
And pepper spray – on a quiet and peaceful college lawn.
Someone gave that order and someone
Should have said it was not right to obey it.
I am curious about what triggers violence as easy as watering a lawn
(five minutes before the man sprays pepper onto a line of peaceful students sitting on the ground, the video shows him chatting with them and patting them on the back)
but I am also curious about what triggers my own interest and outrage and investment.
I have seen horrible police violence before
The bleeding foreheads from the Zuccotti park raid,
The rubber bullet welts from all over the country
The veteran in critical condition from Oakland police action,
The students jabbed with batons in Berkeley,
And I was upset
Of course I was
I looked and got upset
And then looked away again.
This time, though, I can’t look away.
I wonder if it’s because I have stood
On the very same patch of earth
That those students sat on.
I know what that air smells like
I know what the atmosphere feels like
I can vividly imaigne it all and find myself
So proud of a student body that when I was part of it, I took Zero interest in.
Now, they are fighting, now they’re in a war
They make me want to join up –
Help them challenge those that gave the orders
As well as those that ought to have disobeyed them.