Everyone Is Acting Normally

We awaken to a surveillance state

being constructed before our very eyes,

our faces and posts and lives

gathered into a lovely little database,

*

yet everyone is acting normally.

*

We labor under the delusion

that what happens to Them

cannot possibly happen to us,

even as the brownshirts take American lives,

*

yet everyone is acting normally.

*

A new Nero in power, hastening the

decline of the American empire,

is systematically destroying checks

and balances and oversight,

*

yet everyone is acting normally.

*

The bloated narcissist in charge

is the very essence of puffery and fraud,

from the badly applied makeup

to his carefully engineered combover,

*

yet everyone is acting normally.

*

The atmosphere feels poisoned

and heavy now, overt hatred

is spoken out loud, and fascism

is cloaked in religious robes,

*

yet everyone is acting normally.

*

Now the bombs have started dropping,

and American lives are being lost,

all in a futile effort to divert our attention

away from The Files,

*

yet everyone is acting normally.

*

“Whenever a king sees his people

are about to revolt,” Napoleon said,

“he starts a war with another country.”

A blood-soaked distraction, nothing more,

*

yet everyone is acting normally.

*

None of this is normal.

None of this is ethical.

None of this is moral.

None of this is sane.

*

Yet everyone is acting normally.

*

My heart breaks with each new

revelation of our nation’s destruction.

I vacillate between outrage and despair

from moment to moment,

*

as even I strive to act normally.

*

But I’ll see you at the marches.

You’ll read my cries and warnings

scribbled in obscure journals,

stenciled on parking garage pillars.

*

Despair is not an option. Only

love will save us, only empathy

can guide us through this wilderness.

All tyrants fall, and when these do,

*

Resistance will be how we act normally.