Price of Indulgence

the price of indulging incitation,
paid by our silence to timely confront.
remember kristallnacht?
failure of the world at large
to stand up to a bully,
paid by bloods of millions of innocents,
and two atom bombs.

the world will never be the same again,
never again, we say
and then we keep mum,
when silence serves our purpose.

countless millions on the street,
the world lumbers from crisis to crisis,
many, a paycheck away from being on the street,
and our silence may put many out there soon.
one flash and boom it goes,
years of dreams down the drain.

the hearth has been stocked,
the fuel supplied,
a word evil, spoken from a distance safe, enough to spark
the fire of hatred.
as Rome burns, fiddles Nero.
and those who indulge and condone,
won’t even have the
rights to remain silent,
when they come for them.