Bad news from the start

Jan 22, 2023

Old newsreels of tomorrow

People back in the streets

Their flak jackets still incomplete

Their demands are more than reasonable,

But imagining them is a ridiculous feat

Hope is a luxury

We keep asking the poorest folks to believe

Over and over and over again

We put them in front of the cannons

and sell them stories

about their power to be the change

And then we shoot at them,

point blank

We put them to work for us

to catch the bullets

and beat back the hardlines

All the petty hours of their paltry lives

Bereft as they are of all the accouterments of style

We reap the benefit of their strife

It’s an ugly habit they persist in having

Begging to be allowed to keep on living

Acting like autonomous beings with their own demands

their own minds

Let them try to make sense of the layers and layers of lies

Give them the headlines from time to time

In body counts and political satire

We can reduce, reuse, recycle them as soon as the paper

Hits the pile

Meredith’s Substack