~
Bless you;
marvelous horde of righteous patriots
who stood, as Isaiah once did,
crying, “Here am I. Send me,”
offering not just yourselves,
but your children
as conscripts into the breach.
You knew what would be lost.
Yet bravely you shouted yes.
“I will sacrifice—Medicare, SNAP –
I’ve no need of it.”
God bless the weak,
we have shouted in your stead.
This was not confusion.
It was glorious consecration.
You marched into the flame,
selfless and sure,
your chests drumming with pride,
blindfolded, like Justice.
Bless your slower neighbors
the veterans, the union men,
the believers in founding liberty
whose insulin you folded into your stores,
laid on the altar with pious exuberance.
Rise now, kamikaze chorus.
We, the weaker few, salute you
warmed by your self-immolation.
History will remember you.
Not as builders,
nor as stewards,
but as destroyers of process and precaution,
of safeguards and civic seams
those threadbare bonds of the administrative state.
You believed
even in the face of ruin
that to suffer for the powerful
was holy work.
So you knelt
and with steady hand,
bequeathed your sword
to your sons and daughters.
“God bless America,” you whispered,
as the sundering chasm
began to consume you.
~