I saw her from the street, silver hair and upraised arms. She was standing on the sidewalk, not screaming exactly, but speaking forcefully, directly. People heard her, of course. How could they not? But no one stopped to listen.
“How long will we be tied to belligerent ignorance and ill-disguised racism, shackled to a patriotic frisson? We all have to live, with falling skies and civil defense alarms. With melting glaciers and flash flood death.
“How long will we endure antinomian leaders hawking law and order through late night screeds. Apocalypse mongers and war criminals calling down a blood moon at noon. Glorified war on television but ethnic cleansing never in the news.
“Overcrowded prison cells and three hundred years of malignant policing. Rock of Ages stenciled in the prison yard.
“Strip-mined copper and toxic arsenic residue. Drinking water on fire. The shithole stench of a gravemouth trench. The machinery of money grinding flesh and guts. Night after night of self-slaughter. Black mass and massacre. Terror storms and whirlwind dreams.
“It is the hope and stimulus of false reality. Delusions of death. We choke on schemes. We choke down screams. How long?”
I listened to her for a while, but I had to continue on my way. The boss can tell if I linger too long in any one location. I wrote down what I could remember of her speech. I tried, but I’m not sure I got it all.
Proverbs 1:20-23
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