When the threats rained down like lava
And forged fiery beaches of hate,
I took to the podium to smother
With love the fire into steam,
Only to hear they, the unaffected,
Say, “Let’s not get political.”

And when the oozing inferno
Began to burn Churches, Mosques,
Temples, began to flood
The homes of the vulnerable,
Began to seep into the bodegas
And the vehicles and the quiet
Streets of the dispossessed,
I grabbed a megaphone
To shout obscenities at the obscene,
Only to hear they, the unaffected,
Say, “Let’s not get political.”

And finally, as molten evil
Razed communities, shoved
Hope into ovens of apolitical genocide,
Invaded like an amoral army
The breastworks of love,
It came to be too late for words;
So that, told to be silent for so long,
We, the moral, the loving, and the affected,
Ran out of time for politics and democracy,
Had time only to risk imprisonment and death,
And to block and to resist, with our bodies and minds and
Understanding of history,
An inchoate holocaust that, from time to time
Throughout human history,
Has erupted from the Earth and from the institutions of humanity.