Goodnight, Tlatelolco

“¡No queremos olimpiadas, queremos revolución!”
They scream to the subservient uniforms.
I stand distantly.
My army of students
Playing into my hands like puppets.
Like a barely cleared battlefield
My vision is slightly smoky
From another of my cigarettes
Passed around
Over discussions of government transgressions
Who tip the scales with false gold, false hope
For the working force, the poor, the students, the women
For Mexico.
Tearing at loose seams
To see what they can unravel,
Poking at our mounting anger
Almost blindly,
Then sending in drones to combat their mess.
All they want is money and power
Forcing us to overlook the rubble in their dust,
And making us believe that this is a godforsaken land
And the regime is our last hope.
But my soldiers march through onto buses
Explaining the horror to everyday people,
While the government meets in monotone voices
My students parade the terror
Everyday treading mud-caked streets
While the government extinguishes their fire
And yet,
My peers fail their mission,
Each slain around me one by one
Or captured by repulsive, militant murderers
Who act without reason and justify with deception.
And I, dear ones, go insane.
Terror uses my soul;
Horror condemns my heart,
And I take solely to the pen.
“Dos meses de guindas y de mentiras.”
Two months of sour cherries and lies.
Goodnight, Tlatelolco.