My loyalties ought to be elsewhere
Not self-respect.
Twenty-ought years
Of listening, performing
Commands in my ears
Atop the most prominent point
Of a circle.
Do I speak up and proclaim my wants,
As they have, as they do
Whose execution is one’s normative due?
Do I risk monstrosity
That grotesque
Of passivity turned active?
O, people hate the biting mirror.
Architecture worn and rubble
Precludes the fate of so headstrong nations:
A people, all leaders,
Would swallow and spite
Litter the flowers with bones
And plight.
Great structures built with power
Are levied ‘gainst the weak
For plurality would cancel it out;
It’s not imperative
Bodies of power to push for us all,
The lion’s share.
It’s more an empty cadence, mere practice
To tickle emotions
And prove, ultimately, the infallibility
Of tenets of strength and structure:
The passive are submissive
As they should.