Sonnets

Context — July 4 is bittersweet for me. It makes me hope that some spark of our collective consciousness plus evolving technology will create real opportunities for the disenfranchised and left behind.

America was sweltering. The highs
were low below a hurricane back east.
Cold masked the powder keg, a new Marseilles
fomenting slowly. Folks who owned the least
in wealth and training laggards in the pack,
their pipers’ pleas persuasively scapegoat
officials over systems pierced with cracks,
own IRAs propped up and underwrote
the structures they rebelled against. The rich
create–in their minds, rightly–scaffold for
the fortunate to win, and thus bewitch
those left to public institutions, poor.
My Fourth was tainted by this stark contrast
to celebrate betrayal of the mass.