Greatness is directly connected to graciousness and gratefulness.
This hatefulness that you bring to the scene is a different thing.
It’s obscene.
Profanity can touch upon humanity,
but what you’re grabbing at
is like piling cinderblocks atop a canvas canopy.
Heads are shaking saying “this cannot be.”
Today you laid your hand on a book
trying to look like there’s some reverence
some earnest prayer prayed,
but your mug is smug as ever.
You think you’re clever,
but you’re a cleaver,
ready to sever all but your devout believers.
It’s not the absence of prayer that’s concerning,
it’s that you are a thief of belief
and it’s no surprise that those with eyes
see the direction you’re stirring the tide towards turning.
Fates and Gods are stenographers’ shorthand,
but baits from demagogues, are slight of hand,
but slight isn’t your style,
do not pass go, take it to trial, and do a stint
because your brutality is belligerent.
You’re an assault on the senses,
civil rights, and intelligence,
betraying the common good
while equating ratings with relevance.
The new normal is not normal,
no matter how formal the red power tie.
Repeating a lie until you believe it,
claiming populous heroism,
throwing no real bone,
and a few real people still run to retrieve it.
You traffic in anger, fear, and promises,
pushing on any spot, revealing where the trauma is
a shock-and-awe show of force to sit in the seat of power.
Just the cost of doing business.
Buying it in order to break it,
is taking reigns as an obstructionist;
a tough-talking tyrant, and a class c cabinet picker,
instead of innovation, you’re filling it with liquor.
No matter how fine the glass, there’s a disparity
between a blackout tirade and a moment of clarity.
You’re simultaneously a gorgon and a siren.
It’s poisonous to look at you or to listen.
But we do it all the same.
Baring witness is the mission.
There are different kinds of people;
different kinds of men.
We’ve seen your kind before.
We surely will again.
The wall between is not on any border,
rather philosophies of either empathy or enmity;
the power of love or the love of power.
But you’re the loudest shouter. We know who you are.
So have your parade, circumstance, pomp, and tweets.
We’ll be resisting, marching, and breaking beats.
You grabbed the police, the congress and hence all the policy.
You’re fudging with the button that could trigger nuclear winter,
while shaming us as “snowflakes,” while lobbing tear gas canisters.
You might not be “a big believer in climate change,”
but mark these word on winter weather,
snow, like water, has a strength in volume.
We will cover you like a lizard in a blizzard,
watching Cool Hand Luke alone in an air conditioned ballroom.
Your bitterness caused a polemic epidemic,
creating crude chasms in the form of family feuds.
In the reality that is not on television,
our resilience is our brilliance.
We’ll watch your privilege split like fission, a shattered illusion.
To clear up any confusion, we’ll be using fusion.
By virtue of the arts, through inclusion of all races,
because black lives matter, we do not rest in stasis.
There will be no Muslim registry, and our voices hold up choices.
And forget about your plans to closet our people who are lesbian, gay and trans.
And for poetic justice, last to mention, are the ones who will do you in.
If you don’t know already, that’s a reference to all the women.
01/20/2017
“The Only Constant” was first published on Medium.
