Arrested Development

By Ron Faust

No one wants to be arrested but
  Life is deliriously complicated
    So it may be the right response
I’m talking about nuclear weapons
  So powerful to exterminate humanity
    And spread uranium everywhere
Remaining silent is the “patriotic” response
  Rather than endure the consequences
    Of a punishing, suppressive system
A child learns early to play by the rules
  Safer that way than to stick one’s neck out
    Otherwise to disobey may land you in jail
Civil disobedience may brand you as different
  You may lose your freedom and your privacy
    Even ostracized by trivializing laws
Trespassing works both ways in crossing the line
  You may have fears of police carrying guns
    You may not tolerate the noisy closed space
Such fears interact with courage to make a stand
  To draw attention to any nukes harming others
    To engage in non-violent moral persuasion
Nukes should cause us to second guess our future
  The violence unleashed at Hiroshima intimidates
    Just a tiny sample of today’s powerful destruction
Protesters are putting up an alarm to save the world
  Hiroshima opened the gates for escalating violence
    No nukes are a rational reason to be arrested

5/12/22 (On occasion to sound the alarm against illegal nuclear weapons and a kind of arrested development in seeing how dangerous they are)(c) 2022, Ron Faust, Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License.