The Ashes of Matthew Shepard
A cyclist mistook him for a scarecrow.
He was beaten, tied to a fence, and left to die.
People kill in evil wanton ways every day
But this hate had a public, media voice.
Society might separate the most horrific acts
Of humankind from things we now believe in
Like today,
And how we as a society
Accept that African American U.S. citizens
Are not given more rights
If they marry a Caucasian,
Sit in the front of a bus,
Choose any seat in a U.S. theater,
Or use our current bathrooms and water fountains.
Matthew wore the wrong “color” of conservative social sin
In the eyes of others,
Left for dead while tied to a rural road fence
Like a bloody scarecrow,
Yesterday’s progress and this horrific blow,
And this place of hate
Where not even a crow would go.
— Neil Frederick, Brown County
The Machine
Black Elk came out of the mountains
For the first time
He left his village and people behind
He headed down to the valley
To the city of light
To see what he might find.
He came upon great confusion
People with blank eyes
People doing a strange dance
Expressing nothingness and lies
They were dulled and dreamlessly trapped
In a bubble of isolation
Without minds.
And the machine was everywhere
Long tentacles reaching all around
Grabbing everything and everyone in its path
Ripping their souls out
Placing each of them in predetermined complacency.
The herd shuffles along dirty streets
There was no one to meet
No one to greet
All in bubbles and shuffles
Faces flash behind windows of glass
From cars, cabs and buses
Blank eyes
All of them with those blank eyes
And the machine was everywhere
The machine was everywhere.
— John “JD” Dunfee, Morgantown
The Poor Boy
He arrived undersized
Immediately they institutionalized
Compartmentalized
Brutalized and propagandized
The poor boy
Individual traits
Collateralized and finalized
He was criticized, demoralized and desensitized
Till he was perfectly socialized.
That beautiful free flowing spirit
Demonized
Then he realized
He was still undersized
Praying he wouldn’t be euthanized.
— John “JD” Dunfee, Morgantown
