"Honk if You Agree"

 Honk If You Agree

— On October 8, 2022 Kanye West tweeted to his 30 million followers “I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.” The following Saturday, members of a White Supremacist hate group stood on an overpass above the 405 Freeway in California, performing Nazi salutes behind a banner that read "Kanye was right about the Jews. Honk if you agree.”

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Just as an ancient house, demolished
    liberates the vermin
    so we see them now
    in all their flagrance
    and undisguised monstrosity.

Honk if you agree.

Many rats
    are killed in falling mansions
    but some find other houses.  

Hate—it turns out— is not dark.
It blazes with the cruelest light
and rings to petulant music—
    the rage of car horns on the highway.
    the ear-splitting silence of indifference.

Hate is born with you
    it howls in your first howl.
Impatient loathing
    coiled behind our tongues like a python.
    
This hate is ancient.  
And my People’s pain is insignificant, some say.
Our victim card, expired
Our terror, irrelevant.

So I shall exit the 405 for today—
Knowing it is a road I cannot ignore.
I shall without a doubt read its signs again
and again
and drive across its bloodied highways.

But tonight is Friday
so I exit to light candles
    that pierce into this darkness.
I shall be a good ancestor—
one that paves better highways for the generations yet to come.

To see with clarity
but also with hope
For hath I not eyes?

Honk if you agree.