Live and Die

We walk with the information of
quasars and the discernment of protoplasm.
Each day we live and die, each day our tears run dry.
Information is the rubble, the clutter of our civil war.

Reality becomes disposable when fact and
fevered fiction are made coequals,
when the rampancy of lies massacres the truth.
Each day we live and die, each day our tears run dry.
Propaganda walls our gated communities, our guarded cells.

So many concoct frightful conspiracies from techno-witchcraft.
So many dehumanize and scapegoat from delusive threats.
Each day we live and die, each day our tears run dry.
So many are captive here to the craven complex of revenge.
So many swallow here, the mollifying Fentanyl
of a cruel and brutal state.

Clinging to the demagogue, no one is free.
Somewhere in the brownout, is there a beacon?
Somewhere in the nightmare, do we awaken?
Each day we live and die,
          each day our tears run dry.

Thomas Wells’s poetry book Complexions of Being was published by Yorkshire Publishing in 2022. His poetry credits also include Caesura Journal, PS: It’s Poetry, Vols. I & II, an international poetry anthology, Dissident Voice, The Magnolia Review, The Opiate, and Tuck Magazine. Over several decades, his poems have appeared in Visions International, Cafeteria, Gargoyle, and West End Magazine. In 1982, he published his first chapbook of poetry titled "Native Steel" through Black Buzzard Press. He is a member of The Poetry Center of San Jose, California. Read other articles by Thomas.