The official story is we didn’t see it coming.
Except we did.
It was in the atmosphere, daily growing more rancid.
It was in the water we shouldn’t have drunk.
It was on the screens from which we couldn’t divert
enough attention to notice we were about to careen into a wall.
“Normal” developed so many permutations
it was rendered meaningless.
“Politics” was next.
By the time the icy men posing as agents
got to “democracy,” it had already become verboten,
easily demonized, explained away.
There are some today proclaim language dead.
Like god.
