day ONE THOUSAND and EIGHTY FOUR

The Dawn of the Red Hats

down the long marble hallway
there are echoes from a radio
someone is playing in one of the many
offices and rooms, the sound of a
president at a rally and he is telling
them that anyone who disagrees with them
is their enemy: their child, their friend,
their neighbor, the poor, the educators,
journalists, writers, diplomats, shopkeepers,
the tired, the hungry, and even the dead,
and he jokes that they are in hell now
as he mugs for the camera that you
cannot see, but you know it’s there
it’s always there, looming, watching
him so you can watch him too but
you walk deeper into the halls of a
building to file more papers so you
can prove you are who you say you are
so you can go home and bundle
yourself against the cold with your
thin blankets in the dark and listen
to the silence of the snow fall
against the window, and the silence
is beautiful, beautiful in the long night
of waiting for the sun to rise, and you
almost hope it doesn’t because you know
it only brings more long hallways,
more radios turned on and up by unseen
hands that might also one day applaud
with the sound of cheering, the sound
of one man’s victory over all his enemies,
all those people you know who
think something different, and for that,
deserve whatever they have coming

--James Duncan