It is one thing to advocate for equality, representation, and unity.
Indeed, each is an inalienable, fundamental right.
But it is a whole new beast to lay waste
to anything that frightens you or that challenges your beliefs,
or that simply does not mirror your very own ideologies.
How heavy the hand of tyranny that now lays across our mouths,
yet how light our opposition.
Though I do acknowledge the delicacy of the issue at hand,
the fragility of the minds of hysterical mobs
who resolve to smashing windows in blind anger,
who ***** out free thought in daft castigation,
or who ban books even, it seems, like those monsters of history
to which they declare themselves to be diametrically opposed-
even in light of that, it is no excuse
to remain subservient to senseless autocrats
and the absurd legislations they bludgeon us with near daily.
To do this – to do nothing - is to lay down and die
without dignity, spineless and shameful,
though it seems that only myself and a handful of others
can recognize this.  Indeed, how easy it is to glimpse from the fringes.
I, a man of only twenty-seven years, do not recognize you, America.
I long for the days of comfort (so far removed from them, I am)
when I could safely retreat into the lofty and quiet halls of my mind
to enjoy a self-assuring thought that only I created -
a thought with no real purpose but to occupy me for a time,
to entertain me in my moments of dull apathy.
Now I shudder in a cold and contrived prison of vetted words
and unnegotiated mandates where I am told
to wrap myself in our flag to keep warm, to feel safe,
that this is for my own good.
I do not recognize you, America, for this thing you have become.