POLITICAL Poem: is this what you call priorities?, by Rayn Lakhani

the air tastes like rot
like something buried too long beneath your indifference
a million voices choking in the same breath—
but you’re here,
waging wars on libraries
tearing at the spines of books
while your people are crushed beneath ceilings
cracked by storms they couldn’t escape

does it soothe you,
banning the trans kid who just wants to
exist?
to make laws out of fear and call it
protection,
while the soil dries to dust
and rivers crawl slower than your
sense of urgency?

you have no answers—
only distractions:
who gets to love who,
who gets to read what,
who gets to live how.
but the ground splits open behind you,
swallows whole towns,
and you have nothing to offer
but the clench of your fist
on a red pen,
underlining the names
you’d rather erase.

priorities?
a mother watches her child
wade through a flood
to reach the house
that isn’t there anymore.
a farmer breaks open his own hands
searching for life in a land
you let die.
a child breathes their last
while you’re busy
deciding if they had the right to be.

and when it all falls down—
when there’s nothing left to govern,
nothing left to rule—
will you call it victory?
is this what you call priorities?