Moon at Half Past Noon

It begins not with a bang, but a bloom—
A perfumed poison, a patriotic lie,
tended in the gardens of a compliant sky.
Boots of oxblood, navy, jet, and sage,
a curated palette for the coming age,
their uniform thump a syncopated dread
against the soil of your flowerbed.

They do not want your land alone, you see,
but the quiet DNA of a mind set free.
They arrive with verses of fear and grace,
to clip the wing, to leave no trace
of the sky you knew, the unapproved thought,
replaced with the battles they have already fought.

The devil, it seems, does not joke or jest.
He has no need for hellfire; he prefers the chill,
the slow, systemic, patient will
to dismantle a clock, to steal its chime,
and call the silence a victory for our time.

This is the doomsday the paperback prophets told,
every worn cliché a story growing cold.
We watched it on a screen, we ate the GMO corn,
said, “What a tragic third act, so forlorn!”
We waited for the hero on the distant hill,
and all that arrived was the deepening chill.

Act I: The Useful Fire.
A nation, a tinderbox, a “spark” so dire.
Act II: The Termite’s Touch.
A legal, polished, termite’s tooth,
gnawing the foundation, attacking the truth.
Act III: The Mirror Cracked.
Your neighbor, a phantom, a flaw in the design,
a enemy crafted from a once-familiar sign.

You see the playbook, page by patient page,
a slow-motion theft of the common stage.
The director is in the shot, his smile benign,
savoring the silence of your designated line.

But the might you seek is not in a fist,
nor in the rage of a terrorist.
It is the muscle memory of a right,
the currency of collective light.
It is the syllable of freedom, spoken low,
the cobblestone of decency, placed just so.

It is the pedestrian who will not stand aside,
the simple, solid “No” we hold inside.
It is the welder’s torch, cutting the chain,
the look that says, “You will not try that again.”

So tear the doomsday card to shreds of lies,
and burn the script they thought would hypnotize.
The screen is smashed. We’re standing in the street.
The ending is a promise we will meet.

Not with a plea, but with a single breath,
a people, finished, dismantling this death
by every cut, with one demand made clear:
The future is not coming. It is here.