FanStory.com - Four Days While My Cities Burnedby Treischel
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A Poetic Fusion
Minnesota Poems
: Four Days While My Cities Burned by Treischel

The groaning gasp was real, watching my cities burn
as a once peaceful protest turned repulsive sight
of dancing carnage, bringing with it anxious fright
when blurred are social limits of what's wrong or right.
The protest vandals wreaking ruin without concern!
Above the deep'ning din are heard the plaintive cries
for help. Rapacious riot flames lick city skies.
No firemen! No police! And then, a precinct dies.

From whence do these intense emotions churn?
From violence, what lessons do we learn?

We were united 'bout a homicidal death,
universally condemned by one and all,
the nation's call for justice had been quickly met --
dismissal and charged police officers involved.

Two peaceful city's streets are viciously ransacked
destroying businesses completely innocent
while civil law protections become strangely absent.
When hundreds of stores get their doors and windows broke,
their inventories looted, shelves engulfed in smoke,
we find our sacred institutions now attacked
as many thousands riot, violently react.

Where were the mayors of Minneapolis and Saint Paul?
Why were there no responder responses to an urgent 911 call?

On the first night gangs of "protesters" roamed
for miles across the borders of both towns
in organized caravans, breaking panes,
looting local stores in all directions

Police were overwhelmed by numbers present there,
with orders to go "softly" by AG Ellison.
Protecting downtown had left no comparison
to burning areas the leaders jettison.
The message that was sent was that they didn't care.
So soon the mob took note of Precinct Number 5.
Protected well that first night, it will still survive,
but not the cars and stores when protest mobs arrive,
while pain, unrest remain unleashed upon the air.

What was Mayor's calculated thought?
What has abandoning the precinct taught?

Next day, he gave up the ground around Precinct 5
to angry crowds, about three thousand strong.
Then tried to cordon-off the nearby streets,
but when the mob attacked police disbursed.

Where were the cops as chaos chiefly reigned?
Or firemen as the store owners complain?

There's none in sight as limitless terror took control.
The truth was, anxious authorities abandoned
defenseless city streets to raucous rioters,
letting anarchy embolden blazing bedlam.

The fires freely burned. No help would come around.
The firemen who tried were badly beaten back.
It seems police in riot gear were on Prozac.
Their chief stood back, alarmed, afraid, and watched it all.
He was too timid to enforce or reinstall
the public's rightful peace, because so much mayhem
was perpetrated then by too many of them.

Where was the Governor when asked for help?
Should actions call for us to take his scalp?

Day three, I guess you'd say he tried to conjure up some force
by calling up just 500 local guardsmen,
but really such a token unarmed martial show
was not enough to hinder those huge unhinged crowds.

The mob just laughed into the guardsmen's shielded face,
threw insults, bottles, rocks, and even building bricks.
While tear gas deterred little of their terror tricks,
the crowd continued with anarchistic antics.
Then lines of soldiers disappeared without a trace.
The public left alone to best defend itself,
as helpless neighbors watched the looter's flames engulf
the very core of cities built on their behalf.
No single civil corps came forth to give them chase.

Where are any firemen? Where the cops?
The citizens are screaming, "I hope this stops!"

The President demanded that the leaders dominate
unruly groups destroying many neighborhoods,
Illegal rabble out depriving peaceful livelihoods.
The governor finally activated full guard units.

The fourth day dawned with massive marshal show of force
by then the hostile damages were mostly done.
The anarchists, Antifa, now already gone,
moved on to other target cities they could loot,
where under protest cover, chaos to impute.
And left behind, the peaceful protesters, of course,
to be arrested for beliefs they reinforce.

That was the time when all emotions churned.
Those were four days I watched my cities burned


Author Notes
I live in St. Paul, Minnesota, about 30 miles east from the spot where George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer. Our city and its police force were not involved. Yet, 279 buildings in St. Paul were vandalized, looted, and some burned. Worse was done in Minneapolis. Yes, chaos came close to me. Two shopping centers nearby were attacked. At Sun Ray Shopping Center, just off McKnight Road, about 31 stores were damaged. Some just got windows broken. Some, like the jewelry store and Cub Foods were looted. Some had fires set. I live along McKnight Road. About 5 miles southeast of there, Valley Creek Shopping Center was also ransacked, where about half of the stores that I shop at were vandalized. The Wine Shop, Marshalls, and Target stores were broken into and looted. Thankfully the Lunds & Byerlys, where I buy my groceries, wasn't touched. It happened between 3 and 5 Pm, in broad daylight. My wife and I were innocently out walking in a park between those two shopping centers, unaware of the events unfolding all around. But when we went to get a DQ ice cream cone, it was closed down in fear of the riots that were going on at the Target store, one block away. The two gas stations near me, about 4 blocks from my house were vandalized and shut down for over a week. All this happened the first night.

Here's what I think. This was an organized and well planned event. It must have been set up weeks in advance, just waiting for the right spark to initiate their plan. The "peaceful protests" were instigated by the organized anarchists and criminals who used social media to gather large crowds with well-meaning and righteous indignation to their cause about police brutality and systemic racism. Those were the issues the planners used to hijack the gathering, using crowd manipulation techniques to turn them into an angry mob. The process was the same every day (and also used in other cities as well).
First they peacefully marched them into exhaustion all day long, singing, chanting, visiting significant emotional sites, feeding their minds with slogans and speeches using bullhorns. Then, when night fell, they had a tired, frenzied crowd turned into a thoughtless mob. So the leaders would start a small fire letting the crowd revel in the flames, dance and sing around it. Fireworks would be set off to further create tension. It would escalate to a car. Finally, burning a building would start a full-scale riot. When cops were encountered at primary sites, the protesters would stand in line in front of police lines with arms raised shouting "hands up, don't shoot" while screened behind them the anarchists threw rocks, bottles, and bricks (all pre-staged) at them. While the cops were busy at certain locations (likely preplanned), organized caravans from out-of-town cars would fan out all over the two cities to destroy and loot.

I watched a press conference on the third day with a Black Lives Matter leader. I expected her to decry the violence. Instead, she said that this was not a protest. It was an UPRISING. She noted that it was good that white people are finally feeling what black people feel every day.

I believe that there are organized, well-funded people actively trying to ignite a race war within the United States.
I believe there is another group, driven by our higher education system's socialist indoctrination that wants to tear down our capitalist society in order to replace it with a socialist society.
I believe there is a third group, comprised of Democrats, and the Washington swamp people, that will go to any means to destroy our president, Donald Trump.
All these groups have converged to this moment, and are cheered-on and aided by a biased and liberal press.

My wife and I are afraid. I've never owned, nor wanted to own, a gun in my whole life. But I am contemplating that now. If I do, it will be a 9mm pistol, a shotgun, and an AR15.

This poem is a Poetic Fusion.
A Poetic Fusion is a poem consisting of three elements â?? Rhymed Stanzas, rhymed couplets asking a question, and a 4 line free verse comment following each couplet.


     

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