A Lesson in Complacency
They sit in towers high enough to watch us choke on small dreams, spitting laws like bones from a feast we were never invited to, our names only called to clean the blood they spilled.
No one wants to hear it,
how the quiet burns,
how the comfort of ballots
stifles the scream,
muted rage lulled into rows
of obedient checkmarks.
They sit in towers high enough
to watch us choke on small dreams,
spitting laws like bones
from a feast we were never invited to,
our names only called to clean
the blood they spilled.
But we walk with our eyes half-closed,
shoulders slumped beneath the weight
of promises never kept,
content to curse softly
between coffee sips and commuter rails.
What happened to the fire,
the fists raised with something to lose?
What happened to the spine
that once could hold the weight
of injustice, straining but unbent?
They’d kill us, you know,
for power, for fun, for the feel of it,
the thrill of silencing dissent,
our bones a ladder to some lofty seat,
our silence the crown on their brow.
We could straighten our backs,
peel complacency like old skin,
remember that anger, sharp as a blade,
is a tool as much as any vote,
if we let it carve our way to something new.