TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

In December of 1851 Isabella Baumfree marked gender equality in 356 words.

In August of 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sparked a revolution in 17minutes.

In May 2012 a poet tried to do the same,

In the solitude of her room, She sought like inspiration, within and without.

She did not find it.

Pages upon pages of ideas went by,

Spending endless hours thinking,

What usually ended in a decent writ,

Ended instead with the silent thud of nothingness in the extreme,

And the glaring truth of a crime I am truly guilty of.

I am sorry,

For not bringing you 17minutes or 356 words from the lips of the gods,

For not writing the piece that will cause you to be beside yourself with conviction,

For not performing a piece today that will be quoted and googled years after my death,

For not finding what was truly needed within me to show you how to be better!

Forgive me for swiveling on my desk chair from 8-5 and complaining about my pay,

Re tweeting hash tags about feeding the poor and ignoring the hungry beggar on my way to dinner,

Forgive me for shaking my fist at the thieving politician and not registering for a voter’s card,

For overlapping so that I can get ahead of the car ahead of me,

And hooting at the car that is actually following the rules.

For having done more things that would make my children ashamed rather than proud of me.

Forgive me for saying out loud the crimes we commit in the privacy of our daily routines,

And bringing to light the apathy with which we now live our lives.

For repeating the aforementioned crimes until a crime is committed against us make us understand,

That it is solely our responsibility to inspire with less than 356 words and change in less than 17minutes.

Amare Poeta