don’t let it bother you so much.
things have always been bad.
be grateful.
practice kindness.
treat others the way you want to be treated.
why don’t you stick all of your cheap platitudes into one
hand
and shit
in the other
and let
me know which one fills up first?
evil doesn’t take days off for hurricanes and hellfire,
let alone for self-care.
evil works weekends and holidays.
evil rises and grinds before the sun even comes up.
evil doesn’t stop at forty hours; evil doesn’t even stop
when its blisters
pop and
pus and bleed.
right now, it’s sniffing around for its next buck,
looking
for egress into your bank account
through
the claustrophobic and stale places
you’re
forced to sleep and eat, through
your workplace,
through microtransactions
and
convenience fees,
and through
your blood.
evil would leave the planet a smoldering embar,
a mass
grave, an exhausted hunk of charcoal
for a
one-percent increase in the profit margins.
being friendly is good.
being inclusive is great.
but can’t you see them laughing at you
from
their high rises and their yachts
where
the waters are always calm and turquoise
while
you sing kumbaya outside on the street?
those watching from their moral highroad are complicit,
preaching
tolerance and civility, surrounded by bones
as millions of lives, fragile as blown glass,
are
being stomped out under the massive boot of greed
and
oppression.
it took a freak asteroid to wipe out the dinosaurs,
and we’re really going to let ourselves go extinct
because
we’re too comfy with our fast food and TV shows
to fight
back.
***
(Guayaquil, Ecuador -- May, 2022)
I wrote this poem in reaction to the constant string of bad news, evil court rulings, and unjust laws that were being enacted at that time (and continue to today). It's just frustrating watching politicians, the people elected to represent us and protect us, put on a show in the media like they really care when in reality it's in their power, and in all of our power, to stop these things. It's just that nobody wants to come across looking like a bad person while fighting for positive change. However, that reluctance allows for the people who don't care about equality, the health of the planet, or the well-being of the majority of the humans living here to do whatever they want.
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