Cheap Milk and Silent Screams (read my response below this powerful poem)


by Heide Brandes

they’re dancing in the streets tonight
celebrating someone else’s pain
like hyenas drunk on blood and fear
while the milk goes sour in their refrigerators

the television blares about savings at the megamart
and nobody remembers how to grow their own freedom anymore
they revel like gloating goats, shitting
and prancing on expensive things like rights, equality and decency.

I watch them from my window
these proud patriots of conformity
waving their store-bought flags
made in countries where children work sixteen-hour days

“but the milk is cheaper now”
they say, stuffing their faces
with processed dreams
while their neighbors disappear

nobody asks where the musicians went
or why the poets stopped showing up at the café
or how the old man who spoke too loudly
vanished one Tuesday afternoon

they’re too busy comparing prices
at three different stores
posting their outrage online
about the people who dare to say they’re scared

the fear tastes like metal in my mouth
while they toast with plastic cups
to their own tarnished condescension
their own blessed ignorance

you can hear them laughing
about the “sensitive ones”
who saw it coming
who tried to warn them

but warnings don’t matter
when you can buy two gallons for the price of one
and pretend the cameras on every corner
are there to protect you

me, I’m drinking straight whiskey tonight
watching the milk curdle in the moonlight
remembering how freedom felt
before we sold it by the gallon

I have the suspicion that it wasn’t actually the price of things that half the people voted for. If that truly was the reason then they would understand or have at least attempted to find out that tariffs and deporting millions of human beings suddenly would do the complete opposite of helping costs come down.

Instead they voted to force people to live how they think you should live. (The opposite of the concept of freedom they so loudly touted.) They voted to control half the population (women) because half of them are insecure little peckers that can’t get it up when women have a choice. They prefer women trapped, shackled by laws and their fists into marriages that are cruel. They voted because they hate the same people they are told they have to hate. They voted against the environment because “government oversight is bad” yet they think the industry of the rich will look out for everyone’s best interest. The same industries that poison your drinking water and air and would force your 6 year olds to work in a mine 24/7 if allowed for a penny a day.

They did not vote for cheap milk.

They voted for their own freedom to be crushed under the heal of fascism that birthed from power hungry narcissistic capitalists.

Published by Olivia

I live in a magical place, trying to live my best life.

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