Pugnacious

Pugnacious

They blame the ones who look different,
who love different,
who pray in a tongue not their own.

They call it corruption,
call it weakness,
call it sickness eating at our American bones.

As if their fortunes were not built on theft and grift,
whip-cracked backs,
and those forced into silence through non-disclosure.

They blame the dreamers and the poets,
the ones who dare to stretch beyond fences and walls.
They blame the mother crossing the border, child on her hip,
the boy who wears his hair in braids,
the girl who refuses to shrink away.

(Never shrink away)

They call these threats to democracy out of fear,
boastful cowards are always afraid,
afraid of a world they no longer own.

A plane falls from the sky,
and before the smoke has cleared,
before the families have wept,
before the dead are counted,
they twist their mouths and say diversity did this.

As if the metal did not shatter under the same gravity
that bows to no man, not even them.

They would rather see ruin,
than reckon with change.
They would rather burn the house down,
than share the fire.

But the world is moving,
past their desperate hands,
past their rage,
past their control.

The ground does not belong to them.
The air does not belong to them.
The future refuses their names.

Let them gnash their teeth.
Let them spit their lies.
We are louder.


-nl
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