Gaslit
("Snake II", 2015, original block print)
Gaslit
In these times of constant parading
The emperor in his new gown
Sets the fashion for the whole world
Everywhere you look
People blindly proclaiming the nakedly absurd
With confidence born in numbers.
Now basic biological facts of male and female
Have morphed into a fluid nonbinary
Mishmash of possibilities, where instead of in balance
Nurture is stridently mightier than nature.
Not withstanding, tropes of masculine violence somehow immune
To this new social-science,
People who’ve apparently never had house pets
Postulate that in world without males there’d be no violence.
What used to be common sense observation for even a child
That racial differences are obvious, if not so easily defined,
Have become the dogma;
“Race is merely a social construct.”
On the climate front all is hysteria
As what used to be an essential sustainer of life
Is rebranded a toxic gas
Existentially threatening to end all life on Earth.
And in politics, mild protest has become insurrection,
Terrorist attacks embraced as the democratic process,
And the sanctity and security of our vote
Chewed up by a machine that knows no law or shame.
Now the new Nazis call themselves the “Anti-Fascists”
And of course brand all opponents “Nazis”
As if name-calling makes something so
In their make-believe post-modern world of subjective truth.
Hate is love, war is peace
Rigid conformity diversity, destruction creativity,
Abortion the path to modern motherhood
And enslavement to ideology somehow freedom.
These are the times we live in
When gaslighting has replaced the news, entertainment and education
And objective truth driven underground or out into a desert
Away from the masses
Where it can be as it always has, untrodden and free
Yet as deadly as ever to those who refuse to see.
(12/2/23)
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