The Silence
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence
but the silence of our friends. — Martin Luther King, Jr
After the 2020 election
it rained on the West Coast
after nine years of drought.
On the first day of the Silence
we could not hear anything
because of the cheering.
On the second day, Big Brother
announced his coup.
We laughed, & dismissed
his childish tantrum. People
were dying of the Plague.
So many kept dying.
On the sixth day, cries of fraud,
dead people voting, evil
software eating votes,
& so on. Lawsuits were filed.
BB’s search for a lawyer,
any lawyer, yielded
a “new elite strike force”
that spun even crazier theories,
Hydra-like in the way
they grew seven heads
for each one lopped off
by the facts.
Some of the silence,
it’s true, came from the fact
that so many were dead
or were dying & others
were distracted by caring
for them & by funerals
that had to be planned even
if they could not be attended.
The Silence came, too,
from complicity — fear
of being primaried & blah
blah blah —let’s just say
it came from fear. After
a long time the Silence
was penetrated
by a very few Republicans
who stepped forward
to tell the truth.
All were denounced
as party pariahs & traitors
& the White House attorney
said in public that one
“should be shot.”
The Silence grew deeper
& more menacing.
Big Brother lined up
the military & ordered them
to shoot themselves.
On January 6, the Silence
broke in an insurrection
that was quickly quelled,
but not before a noose
got strung up for the VP,
our Capitol got shat in,
& five people not-very-
silently died.
Afterwards, the Truth was
a watercolor left out in the rain,
weeping its meaning away.