The photograph lies, its thousand-word array in millions of pixels
portray a second from decades past.
Helmets and batons, shields and guns, teargas and dogs,
the city’s summer streets of Sixty-Eight.
Soldiers, police weaponized, their attitude Spartan
against the Persians at Plataea.
Hoi polloi, angered, their attitude righteous,
rail against their impoverished, punishing serfdom.
But the photo lies, its focus betrays the scale
of victims’ names drawing a larger, menacing picture.
Hone in on the details, jeans, jackets, all the attire
different than it was, now nearly fifty years ago.
Forty-seven years will not fit in this frame,
spilling over the asphalt like ageless smoke, as adolescent blood flows.
__________
Copyright 2015 by Femme Malheureuse
Graphic: Baltimore, c. 28April2015, by Arash Azizzada via Flickr
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