Loving the Hate

If what you say is contrapuntal and not understood—
if by appearance alone people are afraid of you
soon enough “the genius of the crowd”
will quickly flip on a full-throttled frenzy of hatred
and bring a callous conflagration to burn away the genuine essence
of your uttering existence.

Anything different or unique will be flayed
by zealous sycophants of the insidious Quo
in the phalse belief this keeps us equal.

No one loves (hell, lives) to hate like ‘mericans.
Especially ‘merican regional police.

Heath Brougher is the editor-in-chief of Concrete Mist Press. He was the recipient of the 2018 Poet of the Year Award and is a multiple Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. He has authored twelve books, the most recent of which is Beware the Bourgeois Doomsday Fantasy (Sandy Press, 2024). Read other articles by Heath.