Rise Up, Day 3 (from 23 January 2017)
It rained again today,
Large, thick drops,
Like sobs,
As though the sky,
A pathetic fallacy,
Wept for the loss
Of our dignity
On the first Monday
After hope was sworn away.
Each day, we wake up
To halting words
That make little sense,
Alternative perspectives
Composed like strange
And twisted cantrips
At the witching hour
In the flickering dimness
Of a handheld glow.
We awaken to the words
Of these strange spells,
Captivated, transfixed, enticed
By the serpentine tongue
That seems at once simple
Yet spawns spools of text
Struggling to wrestle logic
From nonsense.
We begin to grow numb,
Like addicts inured to another fix,
Alcoholics for whom the whisky
No longer provides a pleasant buzz.
We laughed, once,
At the clown on the stage,
The too-loud, too-large figure
Who did not belong
Outside of the ring.
We shook our heads
And turned away,
Ignoring the cheering crowds,
Dismissing them, like children
Or fools,
Not believing in their power
To reshape the face
Of our society with so much clown-white.