My brother Greg the prosecuting attorney advises me to chill
He says the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice
I ask did it bend toward justice for the guy who said that
but he hasn’t a clue who I mean
my clue he harvested those words from a bumper sticker
his rosy perspective hogtied into irrelevance by cobwebs
of complacency constructed half a century ago
.
Greg hasn’t attended the gun shows boasting armories
sufficient for overthrowing a third world country
or a first world one
He hasn’t heard the fact-free propaganda blathered forth
by pseudojournalists accountable only to corporate profits
I would have thought he had some familiarity
with the tsunami of corporate crime
Maybe not
Maybe that would explain his inability to see
how close this empire is coming to collapse
.
Why when we contemplate a future civil war
do we imagine only a rebellion of the right
yahoos in red baseball caps rugby shirts and khaki pants
billionaire-financed police force-equipped
kidnapping a governor or dynamiting a courthouse
What if they simply seize the levers of government
Elections mutate into zombie referendums
All results not preordained overturned
.
What if we face the choice of acquiescence or rebellion
Do we fall to fascism or select secession with
Sacramento or Boston our latter-day Richmond
.
What if this time
the first person to fire
on Fort Sumter
has to be one of us
Flavian Mark Lupinetti, a poet, fiction writer and cardiac surgeon, lives in New Mexico. His poems and stories have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Cutthroat, december, Redivider, and ZYZZYVA. Mark’s chapbook “The Pronunciation Part” will be published by The Poetry Box in 2025.