Super Man





It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superman!

My "final" for the Mementos & Metaphors poetry workshop series at the Ovitt Community Library with David A. Romero was a reworking of the Week 1 assignment to write a poem about a family member using an object closely associated with that person. I chose to write about my son Ben and called it Super Man.

My son is a hero.
The boy who idolized Superman in his youth
Now fights for truth, justice and the American way
For the non-Americans in the Inland Empire.

My son is a hero to the latino and latina immigrants.
He flies to the street corners
To hold up his cape-like banners
In peaceful protest of racial profiling.

Faster than a speeding bullet,
My super man will rush to heed the call
Of the disempowered and downtrodden among us.

He will race to the police check points
To protect the rights that we all uphold:

     The right to be treated as human beings
     The right to live in community without violence, and
     The right to have economic justice and no abuse of power.

My son is a hero
Who knows that truth and justice are not the American way,
That capitalism promotes the separation into classes,
That the white patriarchy has caused social and economic imbalance
That has lasted for centuries.

So now, he is a hero to the anarchist way
With x-ray vision to a world that is
More egalitarian, more spiritual, and incorruptible.
Look! It's a bird, it's a plane,
It's Equality for All!