On Becoming More Powerful (Part I)
Here is a poem I wrote a few weeks after the quarantine started:
The insecurity
The questions
The fear
The doubt
The paralysis
The inaction
The despondency
The roundabout
The frustration
And confusion
Not knowing who to listen to
The confinement
The boredom
The temptation to break the rules
The aloneness
The isolation
The lack of human touch
The distracting
The pretending
Staying busy doing stuff

The cleaning
The fixing
The do-it-yourself projects
Having fun
Entertaining the kids
Then wondering what to do next
The overeating
And binging
On the greatest TV shows
The napping
The daydreaming
And pondering whether time has slowed
The praying
The laughing
Staying inspired and strong within
Reconnecting
And building
And reaching out and checking in
All the while just waiting
For someone to give us the go
To inform us that we can return to living
The lives we used to know...
After I read the finished poem, I thought it sounded too nice. Too pretty, in fact. Too easy to be misinterpreted as a clever arrangement of words and emotions that pretty accurately captures the sentiments of the masses at the onset of the shut in period. But this was not the full intent. There was a message towards the end that I didn’t want to get lost—so I attached it in the title: Waiting without Power: My Critique of Staying Home. Still not enough for me… so I am writing more here.
I think my biggest problem with this quarantine is the waiting. Waiting for someone else to tell us when we can "live" again. And while I was rather comfortably waiting, I overheard a news reporter say something that not only made me cringe, it made me question whether or not I was focusing on the right things while I waited. This is what the reporter said:
“Most Americans are enjoying their freedom this weekend; freedom they could lose again, if they don’t follow the rules.”
I don’t know if this struck me so because I am an African-American or because I am American, but it really really bothered me.
I, like every other person, am happy America and is making efforts to protect her citizens (to the degree that I believe it). I am not, however, fool enough to believe that the above-mentioned statement is one made from the spirit of protection; nor am I uninformed enough to believe it is made from a place of syntactic error and misjudgment on the part of whoever wrote the script.

Hearing these words struck a chord of great concern with me; and ultimately verified what I have been suspecting for some time now. This quarantine is NOT about protecting citizens or stopping the spread of the virus. It is about accumulating power. It is about how much control the government can have over its citizens without objection.
I sincerely believe that 2020 is a powerful year. It is a year of transition—a year where we the PEOPLE have access to the GOD-given powers with which we were born. World governments are colluding together to stifle this real life coming of age/ reclamation story. Instead of us arriving at the knowledge of our power, we are being consumed with fear and distracted by the barrage of news reports about the corona virus, the Coronavirus Disease, COVID-19 or whatever else it will be changed to in the future.
I am interested in power. My power. The power I have been growing into more and more since my quantum leap year- The power that much of humanity is here to make sure we get. Want to explore that with me? Cool. Let's go!