This post is for a fellow poet, Renee Nicole Good, who was killed by ICE this week. Her death was senseless, brutal, and unjustifiable.

It was murder, and it was sanctioned by our government.

I’ll be honest, when I first heard about it, I thought it was just another one of the insane things that happen in our crazy-ass world. Our government is blowing up fishing boats and kidnapping presidents of other countries, after all. They’re locking up immigrant children in juvenile detention facilities known for child abuse. Americans are being encouraged to eat red meat, drink alcohol, skip immunizations…and don’t worry about not being able to afford health insurance. Our president is barely conscious, and those are his good moments. And there’s the Epstein files, which are undeniably damning to the bastard.

So, what’s one more dead 37-year-old mother of three in Minneapolis?

Except…shit. She was shot by ICE, she was a U.S. Citizen…and she was a poet and writer.

“Don’t kill the poets,” says the old Irish proverb. So writers have enjoyed this “immunity” for centuries, running around battlefields with press passes stuck in fedoras and “REPORTER” emblazoned on bulletproof vests. And yet, this is no proof against a bullet.

Reporters, scholars, historians, writers, poets are the first to be sought out by a would-be suppressive government. But in the end, there is another proverb that has proven truer than the first.

“The pen is mightier than the sword.”

The Poet Wins
By Michelle Garren-Flye

This is how it begins:
killing poets in the street.
Let’s see who wins.

Grow some thicker skins,
don’t be indiscreet:
that’s how it begins.

They’re watching your sins:
Big Brother brings the heat…
But wait! Who wins?

No way out of these ins,
just learn to keep the beat
cause this is how it begins.

Shall we all become shut-ins?
Bend the knee, become obsolete
and let Him think He wins?

No, we’ll stand up against the spins.
Face death, oh, it’s bittersweet!
So this is how it begins…
But in the end, the Poet wins.