What Rough Beast | Poem for February 28, 2017

Lucinda Marshall
The Breakdown Of All Things

Priests of old gods tell us
that we need a moral compass,

while methodically laying
siege to political agency.

“Stop The Bloodless Coup!”

our protest signs implore
as the unthinkable becomes normal,

reality revised and televised—
the medium has always
been the message.

Scientists and archivists race to
safeguard knowledge from extinction,

lest truth become relegated
to the margins of collective memory,

and deceits of false omnipotence
metastasize into perverted epitaphs
of democratic delusion,

as the sound of jackboots draws near.

 

Lucinda Marshall‘s poems have appeared in Sediments, One Sentence Poems, Stepping Stones Magazine, Columbia Journal, Transition on indolentbooks.com, Poetica Magazine, Haikuniverse, ISLE, and elsewhere. She blogs at Reclaiming Medusa. Lucinda co-facilitates the award-winning Teen Writing Club in Gaithersburg, Md. She is a member of the Maryland Writers’ Association and Women, Action, and the Media.

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