good ol' days

  your good ol' days
  don't seem so good
  with stretchers for broken bodies
  and your boot heel crushing the heart
  of a dream

 you'll say i'm too young
 too young to see
 the real world
 the cold world
 the world you call home

in my soft middle age
you see weakness
i have my battle scars
and i refuse to fall

in my feminine form
you see frailty
you see difference as
the rungs beneath you
to step on

but we are gathering before you

women and men
of every color
every background
a multitude

you can have your good ol' days
we are marching on

your good ol' days
don't seem so good
cuz you froth at the mouth
at their memory
and seethe all the way
to the angry skin
of your screaming face


are you afraid?

i glimpse a scared child
hiding there in the crease
of your furrowed brow
a little boy

you told that girl
standing her ground
so courageously
to go home to her mommy

do you need yours?

in the dark night
of your good ol' days
did you cry out
for her arms?

have you been on that stretcher, broken?
who put their heel on your heart?

if you take us back
to your good ol' days
when the walls are built
and the bodies are broken
when the stretchers have taken out
all of the casualties
of your so called righteous battle

you say we will be great again
i wonder what we will remain

when the destructive dust settles

and we do rise
from those ashes
still a people
but torn at the seams
of our very souls

who will hold you then?