in the auditorium hot and April sticky
our massing bodies pressed tightly together
yesterday’s spring fever yielding to this

sadness fear anxiety bitterness need

we have waited sobbing through hours
listening to sporadic news trying to make
sense of this brutal assassination of one

man who held our hearts our hopes
when he spoke and promised change
now it is Friday spilling over with

sadness fear anxiety bitterness need

to do something say something shout
our pain and disbelief as we link arms
with our black brothers and sisters

with our brown brothers and sisters
with our white brothers and sisters
our college’s voice mute to our

sadness fear anxiety bitterness need

so we’re here now gathering
shards of broken dreams shattered
and fallen like Martin’s brilliant star

the Dean finally come to inform us that
if we leave campus we will be dis-enrolled
waves of raw emotions ripple through huddled bodies

sadness fear anxiety bitterness need

we’ve worked so hard to climb these stones
steps they said would take us out of poverty
and ghettos as we scrimped and paid our ways

until yesterday’s single shot rang out the bullet
traveling all the way from Memphis to Kansas City
only to be lodged again in Minneapolis, Seattle, Chicago

still the same sadness fear anxiety bitterness need

then yet to be acknowledged beyond a notice
on the hall board noting King’s passing as if life
would go on somehow unchanged from the day before

nor was it enough we said to each other our throats
raw with the telling and retelling as buildings emptied
onto the streets as we debated our lives our futures  

already so full of sadness fear anxiety bitterness need

our fragile tomorrows hanging in the balance
we raised our trembling voices then and now
We March!