Month: November 2023

After listening to the rhetoric of various politicians, I believe times have grown ever more dangerous to democracy no matter how much those same politicians claim to be defending it. I’ve revised and retitled this piece which I first wrote and posted the night before the 2017 inaugural and titled If They Come. However, I owe a huge debt to Martin Niemöller (1892-1984) who wrote “First they came for…”  Often this quote is mistakenly referred to as a poem.  Niemöller often spoke of his own complicity with the Nazi regime in its early years by his inaction and not speaking out, especially when it came to the persecution of leftist political party members with whom he did not agree.  However, after too many disagreements with Hilter’s policies, Niemöller was imprisoned on July 1st, 1937, and was not freed from the concentration camp until 1945.  There are various versions of his famous quote as Niemöller changed the list of victims depending upon the audience to whom he spoke, but his message is clear: Silence and inaction equals complicity.  If we are silent, we too are guilty.  We must not be silent. 

Source information courtesy of Holocaust Encyclopedia

They’ve come before.
Remember history.
Remember the millions,
the thousands, the hundreds--
totaling seventeen million.

And yet,
always,
they come.
Different times, different places.
Always leaving behind traces
of their strange bitter fruit.

They are poised,
preparing, ready to come.

Some of us remember,
state the parallels,
recite the historical,
are laughed at as the hysterical.

The majority, sigh and say–
They come not in his name
for they wear not the robes of the arcane,
burning crosses straight, 
painting crosses twisted.

Some forget,
leaving voices unraised.
Some simply care not,
since they come not for them.

Yet, we must remember--
Since, in the end,
they are coming for us all.

Darkness imprisoned for years
revels and romps now freed from sanctions,
freed from society’s guilty tears.


They are coming
for the immigrant ones
to part them from jobs no one else will do,
leaving a river filled with razor wire
and shouting, “Build a wall. Build a wall.”
I will raise my voice, “Build it around me as well.
For I, too, believed the words inscribed upon Liberty.”

They are coming
for all the women
who do not walk 72 steps behind,
chaining them to males who must approve.
I will raise my voice, “I will not walk into yesterday.
I will not let you make any daughter a handmaid.”

They are coming 
for the Jewish ones,
pinning yellow stars, 
creating gas chambers,
I will raise my voice, “Take me with them too.
For I too, am a Jew.”

They are coming
for the Muslim ones,
planning to kill the Geneva Refugee,
with their unproven facts, shouting, “Terrorist. Jihadist.”
I will raise my voice, “Take me with them too.
For I also pray to the God of Abraham.”

They are coming
for the darker ones,
with ropes and whips and epithets from the past,
shouting, “White Power, White Power.”
I will raise my voice, “Bring enough to kill me too.
For I have the same red blood as my siblings you seek to kill.”

They are coming
for the transgender and queer ones,
with fists and broken bottles and shouts of “Freak.”
I will raise my voice, “Beat me as well.
For I am sure to upset you by the bathroom I plan to use.”

They are coming 
for those who love differently
with researched plans of electric shock to convert,
all therapeutic to change, of course,
or with hands dripping violence and shouts
of every demeaning word we ever heard.
I will raise my voice, “Beat me. Take my rights
so recently given, though long denied.
Never will I lose my dignity again in silence.
For I hid among shadows much too long.
Now, I, too, live in the sun,
Proud of who I love, and I will not go away.
I remember we are neighbors,
each of us, brothers and sisters
in God’s eyes.”

When you come for one,
you came for us all.
All you deem different,
dangerous to your thinking,
we make you uncomfortable,
but we give you something--
Someone, something to blame.

But after you have come for us all,
bound and bloodied us as best you can,
taught your school children the different are to blame,
worthy of nothing but your hate,
allow our resistance,
without striking, without killing,
no sling shot will we need
to shatter the crystal facade
of patriotism you fashioned 
to cleverly hide away 
your destruction of democracy 
and all your injustices. 
Then the world will see
the monster of fear and greed
you are and your destruction
of democracy.

On the day of God’s light,
perhaps you will look
beyond skin,
beyond abilities and disabilities,
beyond roads to God and ways of worship,
beyond gender and orientations,
beyond your own fears and needs,
and then see
the human heart is born
with weakness in hate and greed
with strength in justice and love
all in equal portions.

What will matter most,
when each heart lies dissected,
splayed open, bare,
before its maker,
is which portion we allowed to atrophy and die,
and which we sought to exercise,
strengthen and increase in size.