Turn Off Your ‘Shift’ Key, America by Danial Orange

A friend of mine, Dan Orange, wrote a note titled Turn Off Your ‘Shift’ Key, America and posted it for all of his friends to read over on a social networking site. It is so well done and truly embodies the spirit of what we stand for here at GLR that I immediately asked permission to repost it in its entirety here. Dan said he would be honored so without further ado, here is something we should all keep in mind every day!

This is reposted just as it was originally written**

Dear poets and poetically-minded friends,

I conjured this up on my commute to work this morning. I'd love to get some feedback.

Turn off your ‘Shift’ key, America
by Danial Orange

if we turn off our ‘shift’ key, america
instead of talking @ people, we’d have to talk 2 them.

we’d be forced to see that hatred, fear and ignorance
are problems that exist within the US
because they really exist within us.

people in our nation’s capitals
would have to pay attention to our nation’s lowercases
living in lowerplaces, earning lowerwages,
with children exposed to risk at lowerages.

we’d place more value on =
and less on having +
if we turn off our shift key, america.

with ‘shift’ on, our thoughts are all $!
switch it off and we could be all 4 1
and maybe 1 4 all.

there’d be less emphasis on “I”
if we turn off our shift key, america.

**Photo taken my moi!