THE STORM THEY NAMED DEMOCRACY
The debut of the “Verses in the Wake” poetry column tears through illusion with lyrical fury. It strips democracy of its costume, revealing empire’s raw face—where ballots bury dreams and language launders violence. This is poetry as reckoning. As resistance.
01 VERSES IN THE WAKE
the ballot box—a casket
where grandma's dreams decompose.
we vote and vote still they carve
our dining rooms to war zones.
democracy: a thunderstorm with teeth
tearing through refugee tents,
a promise penned in vanishing ink,
a banquet of empty plates,
a lullaby hummed through slit throats.
in morning news, language launders violence:
drownings baptized "border security"
concentration camps christened "facilities"
genocides sanitized to "conflict"
tech oligarchs sanctified as "visionaries,"
their wealth built on gig-worker spines.
I strip away these masks:
empire's face raw and ravening.
they peddle tariffs as working-class salvation—
Robin Hood in reverse, picking public's pockets,
padding offshore vaults with pension funds.
democracy dons its suit for cameras
while backstage it sharpens blades.
they promised liberation across oceans
but freedom demands its pound of flesh:
color-coded admission
gender-gated entry
wealth-metered worth
passport-ranked humanity
democracy?
don't speak that word to me
while prison soil feeds on Black bones
while children cage-sleep counting breaths
fascism—that cockroach
drunk on delusions of permanence
until we organize, until we illuminate,
until collective voltage floods the room
and we witness its scattering—
history's footnote instead of its author.
