WHO ARE YOU?

Who are you all, and why do you hate this country so much?
Why do you hate me so much? What have I done to you?

Were you always there in the shadows, the corners, the
White-washed cellars, nursing your growing list of grievances?

You have likely been friends and family to me, haven’t you?
Not some raving nut case on a downtown street corner,

Or one of the paranoid, babbling bloviators on those all night
Radio talk shows catering to conspiracy minded insomniacs.

No, you looked like, acted like, normal sane people. How could we
Know you were closet insurrectionists, uncomprehending fascists?

I’d hoped never to see this happen, but now that it’s here
There is the stink of inevitability about it, about all of you.

Frightened, angry, frustrated by my lack of options for opposition,
I will somehow find a way to oppose him anyway, oppose you all.

For now this old man has only his poems as weapons against you,
But I am at the grinding wheel daily, sharpening them for battle.

M.J.  Arcangelini, (b.1952, Pennsylvania) resides in northern California since 1979. He has published extensively in both print and online venues & over a dozen anthologies.  He is the author of 8 published collections, the most recent of which are the full-length PAWNING MY SINS, 2022 (Luchador Press), and the chapbooks FIERCE KISSES (Rebels & Squares Press 2024) & HOOKING UP (Pure Sleaze Press, 2025).