By Whose Righteousness

An outburst: lightning
And its echoing thunder.

Reaction without restraint;
All the pain of retaliation.

Harrassed, provoked,
Driven into a baited trap.

I rant and rail.
Injustice sets my teeth
On edge.

I rise to the pricks of enmity
And go on and on because of them
Till the red tide of my anger
Washes me away.

But, still, I ask, by whose righteousness
Are these wounds made mutual,
These cuts thickened into scars,
Made into slits to howl out venom
When every other mouth we had
Was bound and gagged
When all we owned were hang-dog looks
Dumb insolence and insubordination?

What else will speak on our behalf?
What other voice will dam our stifled screams?

What voice, I ask? What voice?

© BH 2015

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So, Shakespeare’s words ‘poor dumb mouths’, spoken by Antony referred to the assassinated Julius Caesar. Betrayal, power, misplaced honour, conspiracy.

How thoroughly, modernly depressing. To this catalogue of horrors, I find I'm adding manipulation. Against the background of shrieking manufactured outrage, today's insiduous thing is how outcry becomes a tool. The skill today is to goad until we force an overspill of anger.

Politics is riddled with it. Pushing opponents toward overheated moments where indiscreet words pour out. Then, in smug mode, the manipulators mete out punishment. In the words of Eric Berne, it's the perfect NIGYSOB scenario: the manufactured Now I've Got You Son Of a Bitch.

I wish it stopped there, but the same manipulation underscores our approaches to conflict. We have sheer might, razing cities to the ground like they were paper, and blind fanatic opposition, ready to destroy anything to fuel the fight. Atrocities proliferate. Enemies become addicted to enmity. They manipulate it to grow the hatred they need to survive. People don't matter; the dead don't matter.

So victims are driven into victimhood. They lose the right to simple anger because to speak it places them on one side or another. And,I realise how angry I am at that cynical control, at how the vulnerable and fearful can only flee before it, voiceless and wounded. 

There are two parts to this angry poem: By Whose Righteousness here and Livid. Somehow connected. Companion pieces. That sounds cosy, I said, but it's not. It's too complicated for that.