A Thin Veneer
We often forget—
chaos is just two disasters away.
A novel virus decimates store shelves like cargo containers
sliding off the deck of a listing ship, vanishing into
an ocean of retail panic
then a snowstorm knocks out the lights,
plunging an already panicked electorate into
fits of conspiracy, the weapons come out,
mobs form
when nerves are shredded and your average ignoramus,
perhaps for the first time, stares raw survival in the face,
what does it take? what feather will tip the scale and turn
the disconsolate into the irrationally dangerous?
they say the average man is only three hungry days
away from bloody savagery
a tainted water supply? a rumor?
one man to stoke fear with the insane rhetoric
of a mid-twentieth century dictator?
not much.
we are only a thin veneer removed
from third world pandemonium,
a gunshot away from
madness.