by Dylan Brody
When jingoism masquerades,
parading as bold journalism,
vast engines spin warm sentiment
from wooly facts. Comforting anger
draws the cold and shock-numb
refugees forward, flag-wrapped
in fear. Unknowing, focus pulled
ever back, we run from tragic memory, reviewing what we wish
we had not seen. The images replay. The Alamo, Pearl Harbor
and the Maine. Remember, all, the rhetoric of rage.
Then evil's a convenient word
to mask our shame. Cleanse hatred
with dehumanizing syntax. Phrases turn like lathes
to smooth a biting edge from vengeance, shaped for safety,
rounded to protect our childish tongues. Incomprehension,
felt or feigned, mutes trumpet cries of empathy. Violence
seems righteous when the bloody singing blade's named Justice.
Swing wild the steel; sling wide the rhetoric of rage.
Now history goes down to page
in letters we deliberately blur. Books
record in crisply printed font distorted choices
disavowed in vehemence, guilty protestations of necessity
political or humanist. Morality becomes a password, conscience
liability when killing is the answer to whatever question's asked.
Thus, Patriot's the name we give to members of a mob.
Unquestion every mind. Lockstep the prose to match;
write nothing but the rhetoric of rage.
