now in poetry

You can’t rely on begging heroes or leaders to change things anymore.
They may be compromised. They may be exhausted.
They might have death threats hanging over their grand kids.
They might owe too much money for the upkeep on their hangers-on.
They might just be getting too old for this.
Insult the safe mock the privileged deride the comfortable.
We deserve it can take it need to feel a little heat
if everyone else is being shoved into lines to be burnt.
It’s on you now.

When your nation is under siege your capital seized via undemocratic means
everything is necessarily political and here is no neutral now. Now is now.
The very ability to claim a moment “shouldn’t have to be political”
is built upon the suffering of others that fueled your past comforts.
If there’s anything the last few months have taught us we don’t need to be entertained.
We need to be challenged and harshly and now.

On the other hand, you are not pot-committed to the horrors you accidentally supported
just because you fear a sense of personal culpability, join us, we can undo all of this together
your only responsibility is to fight back now because now is now.

The hardest gap to cross is the Trump followers who see the horrors happening
but can’t admit it to themselves because of what it’d make them.
They realize they accidentally backed white nationalism and fascism
because they thought it wasn’t to be taken literally and what does that make them now?
If they fight back now they fear they’d have to admit what they did.
What they contributed to then but that was then and this is now.

The people who wrote in Mickey Mouse or Jill Stein
because they bought into crazy conspiracy theories about Clinton
they’re afraid to join in with us too because they’d have to admit they were wrong
wrong in buying into conspiracy theories that made them feel inside and smart
that they contributed too to the fix being in.
Smart people are the easiest people to fool, cults have known this forever in brainwashing
if a smart person is vulnerable to wanting to believe
they have more processing power to talk themselves into it
but that was then and this is now and now is now and it’s on them now and it’s on you now.

But if they won’t let themselves wake up yet
tell them when they come for you we’ll be there for you too
whether you’re in denial now or not, remember that, tell them that now.

Maybe we’ll get through to them, maybe we’ll get there or maybe we won’t.
But it’s on me now it’s on you now the time is now, now is now.

Last updated February 10, 2017