November 3, 2020

We’re all on tenterhooks, watching and waiting.
We’re tired of tirades. We’re tired of debating.
All of our liberties turned inside out.
What was once done in peace has turned into a bout.
They storm and they threaten and set up false boxes—
the eagle of freedom brought down by vile foxes.

We can’t vouch for our system when so much goes wrong—
when our national anthem’s drowned out by a throng
of those who think that because they are white,
they are superior and have the right
to put down minorities and to change facts,
their white supremacy pardoning the acts

of looting and burning and intimidation.
These acts being staged with no trepidation
thanks to the POTUS who sits calmly by
and approves of it all from his perch in the sky.
We anticipate violence—fear it’s the ones
sowing disorder who have all the guns.

What is the solution? To arm everyone
and have a big shootout when voting is done?
Increasingly, I fear our cyber connection
has been both a bane and a lethal infection.
The villains know how to make use of it
to foment disaster and cause a big fit.

It reaches out hands to enter our homes.
It slashes and pierces and rabidly foams.
Hiding its poison in all of the cracks—
in viruses, malicious websites and hacks.
Turn out the villains, then work on the system
that welcomed them in and pampered and kissed ’em.

Our system of governance was made to be changed,
lest it be exploited by the deranged.
Enact campaign finance and firearms control,
then stem the electoral college’s role.
Time-worn practices need doing in,
for the robes of liberty have grown too thin.

Threadbare and tattered, she quakes at the blast
of self-serving politicians that tear at the past.

Prompt words today are tenterhooks, anticipate, storm and vouch. Image by Peggy Zinn on Unsplash. Used with permission.