Tone Down The Rhetoric, By Brian37 (Now Jackie Leigh) (AKA Brian James Rational Poet On FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)

Where where those calls
When behind the glass
The man with no class
Incited a mob to attack police?

Where were the calls
To stop the carnage
For the police to remove
His knee from a neck

Where were the calls
For due process
For probable cause
For warrants and a court

He is now a judge and jury
And will resort
To using our military
In place of police

Tell that to the 140 officers
Of January 6th
Who suffered injuries
And the families of the 2 murdered

Since when is bigotry obligatory
Mandatory to convey loyalty
To portray patriotism
To deny pluralism?

Your history isn’t being erased
By pointing out the truly oppressed
Why are you obsessed
With who someone loves

Or what is between their legs
You are on low rung pegs
Prostituting fascism
As if it were fashionable

As if
It were reasonable
What bigots really fear
Is being held accountable

So they play a game of Twister
Of Scapegoating Scrabble
Orwellian double speak
Our humanity in trouble

Diversity diminished
By the bully on top
If given his way
All dissent would stop

You want an apology
Because we stand up to a bully?
You want an apology
For standing my ground?

Look at the thousands of rounds
Of attacks on blacks
Like George and Garner and Briana
And the call for the death penalty

Of the Central Park Five
Don’t hand us your jive
Your gaslighting, your pretending
That you are the victim

No, not when you target
My innocent migrant neighbors
Claiming they’re gang members
Or have rapist behaviors

Is silence and submission
What you want from minorities
Are those your xenophobic priorities
Lonely white male insecurities

Don’t hand me your lies
That it is just an “opinion”
If you valued diversity
Then you wouldn’t support him

Tone down the rhetoric?
How pathetic, when you wont
Put the responsibility on the top
The person most responsible

The person who perpetuated
The lie that a black man
Was not born here
That he shouldn’t hold office

Tone down the rhetoric?
When he types in all caps
Every damned day
Like a middle school kid

Who was told in the candy isle
He couldn’t shit on the floor
And blame the employees
And claim they made him shit.

Tone down the rhetoric?
How nice am I or anyone
To be to people
Who try to erase their existence

Don’t you dare equate him to Lincoln
He had an adult lexicon
Don you dare equate him to King
Who died for doing the right thing

Don’t you dare equate him to JFK
A Democrat murdered in his prime
Trying to make the world a better place
Don’t get in my face

And tell me to Tone it down
Tell the orange clown, he is the napalm
The Molotov Cocktail , the grenade
Grenade of of division

He uses as a distraction
To foster more division
More destruction
More depletion of human rights

Your enemy are not blacks
Your enemy are not trans
Your enemy are not migrants
No matter what he says

No, now is the time
To stand in solidarity
Against his petulant pedantry
Against his constant inflammatory

Rhetoric, that blacks commit more crimes
That Chicago is a violent city
Why should I have any pity
For a rapist who cheated on all 3 wives?

Silence is how democracy dies.
No, I am not your enemy
No, we do not want violence
But we won’t be in compliance

When kids with cancer get deported
When 14 million people get cut off
Of their health care, when the GOP
Don’t care to feed kids school lunches

When mass shootings happen in bunches
Where bullets turn public school classes
Into Swiss cheese, please, please, please
Spare me your fake outrage

It is just another Joseph Goebbels page
Of “Repeat a lie long enough”
Well we’ve had enough
What do you want us to do ?

Tell us, because we will not be silent
So if you want us to “tone it down”
It starts with the man most capable
Of turning the gas off

But you fucking know he wont.
He doesn’t care if we are divided
And soon, unfortunately soon
You will find out

He never cared about you either.