Moon at Half Past Noon

We painted our enemy on canvas skies,
With brushes dipped in twilight and old lies.
A silhouette to hold our shapeless dread,
A sacred monster we were taught to feed with daily bread.

We built the cage with whispers, not with shouts,
With turned backs and convenient doubts.
With paperwork that justified the fall,
And quiet hands that raised the common wall.

The soldier and the citizen, you see,
Are branches of the same old, blood-dark tree.
One holds the steel, the other pays the price,
Both serving the same cold device.

One pulls the trigger, one looks away,
Both building the prison where they’ll stay.
One wears the uniform, one wears the suit,
Both tasting the same ashen, bitter fruit.

And here lies the banality of evil, love—
Not in the blast, but in the dove
That coos and preens upon the wire,
While, down below, they stack the funeral pyre.

It’s in the scapegoat we design with care,
To hang our secret sorrows and our shame.
We think by burning him upon the square,
We will forget from whence the trembling came.

We are the quiet keepers of the flame,
That lights the way to ruin and to blight.
We speak of peace, yet whisper war’s old name,
And draw the curtains on the coming night.

So when you see the world through “us” and “them,”
And feel the ancient, tribal, fearful pull,
Remember that you’re looking in a gem
That shows your own face, beautiful and full.

And know the true and most profound disease
Is not the scream that tears the air apart,
But the quiet love that, on its knees,
Prays for a peace with a conflicted heart.

The most profound and devastating hell
Is not the one we’re told we have to fear,
But the one we build so terribly well,
Year after complacent year.