enlisted

I’m not good with blind anger:

Not with pundits who sling it freely

Or families who slam it into cupboards

Or strangers who spew it into comments

Or stuff it with statistics.

 

I can’t sit in your putrid stew

Or near the bellowing of your gross opinion

I don’t appreciate the cloud you fill the room with

And how we all are left to swallow your second hand stupidity.

 

While you rise in an uninformed frenzy

While your madness recklessly bellows

While you inflate your mindless case,

You are victorious!

 

You’ve crushed the gentle

Who are sealed in unbearable tension;

You’ve decamped the wise

Who have already left you behind.

 

But you’ve got your crouching army!

They fill all the fields and the pages and the conversations

But you should know

The only thing they are loyal to is rage.

 

Listen: if you are angry at least have the decency

To shove it up a bad poem;

To unpack your tiny brain and try to understand

What it really is.

 

Listen: we’ve been working really hard to rally the mercy

Of optimism and light;

To fight the relentless, stinking, piles

Of what it really is.

 

But compassion is muted by your battle cry

And silence misread as retreat

So nature and art must carry us on,

And one angry word:

Enough.