Requiem for City Lights

When they finally came for us
I knew Shakespeare had it wrong.
There was no need to kill the lawyers first.
The lawyers were the cowbirds on this new farm.
Laying eggs of lies in any nest they please.
Black or white or left or right
Anything for a richer fee.
They watched darkness hatch
and push the truth from every nest
until the lies were the only mouths
 Left screaming for our new Redeemer’s best.
Then the lies became the truth.
No need to kill the lawyers.
They were happy mules.
They taught us all and kept the score.
There is no quality of mercy in the law.
The more equal pigs just get more.

 When they came at last
They came for the artists first.
Now those are truly dangerous minds,
laughing at the naked kings
dancing down the street.
I should have guessed, but
our surrender was meek.
We had consumed our songs
in self-important lists.
In our angry cliques,
we stuck to the same old tricks.
We were all so woke,
so embedded in our tribes,
that nobody was allowed
to write about this
unless they were that.
Nobody could wear this
for fear of misappropriating that.
Nobody could play a part
unless they were not acting.
The writers wrote memoirs to themselves.
The painters painted self-portraits.
And the sculptors unveiled
untouched blocks
lest they offend
the spirit
of the stone or wood or clay.
The poets were all more pronoun
than anything profound.
Yes, we were all so completely woke
that our imaginations fell asleep.
Yet,
some of us still howled,
Cast spells to the tempest.
Sailed to the lighthouse in a storm.

Now we are caught and
will be tried.
Here,
in a monument
to selfishness and greed,
they hope to watch us bleed.
In the shadows
of the white, fluorescent night
Orwell would be the first to die
If he was still alive.
But lord, they love the tricks his mind contrived!
Cages full of hungry rats
hang around our necks and heads.
We hear the milling
of a silent, servile crowd.
The happy pigs
play music in the owners’ suites
and watch our final act.
But all my eyes can see
are flashing eyes and yellow teeth.

.When they finally speak,
The crowd is stilled,
The Hobson’s choice revealed.
We need not die the announcer says
If we only make art their way.
Some must die, of course
to entertain the rest.
We need only push the button on the right
And watch our neighbor die.
Our cage will stay shut tight
while our neighbor screams and writhes.
The first to push is the first to live.
Push for light.
Push to paint.
Push to write.
The crowd begins to chant,
Distant breakers on a beach.
Then louder
like a gospel choir,
like a Christmas choir at midnight mass:
Kill your neighbor
Kill your neighbor
Kill your neighbor.