Dedication — For the People In The Chairs
For the ones watching from living rooms and break rooms,
from factory floors and pickup trucks,
from kitchens lit by one tired bulb and morning coffee steam.
For the citizens who stand for the anthem,
stand for funerals,
stand for their parents,
stand for the flag folded into triangles.
For the ones who watch a grieving parent on a screen
and don’t need a whip count to know when to stand.
For the people who are still standing
even when it feels like nobody in power stands for them.
Prologue — Applause as Currency
In that chamber of polished wood and rehearsed outrage,
standing has become a performance.
They rise on cue.
They clap on schedule.
They sit when told.
Applause now moves like currency —
spent where it benefits,
withheld where it costs.
Some grief gets a standing ovation.
Some grief gets a bored stare at a phone.
And somewhere between the teleprompter pauses
and the camera pans,
the human moment gets negotiated away.
Not by accident,
but by calculation.
Nursery Rhyme — Clap When Told
Clap, clap, cameras roll,
sympathy scripted, heart on hold.
Stand on cue, sit on time,
grief reduced to party line.
Clap, clap, don’t ask why,
truth gets trimmed before it’s dry.
Cheer the script, ignore the pain,
tomorrow brings the show again.
Clap, clap, ratings climb,
victims slotted, line by line.
Some lives count, and some don’t “play,”
switch the feed and look away.
Poem — Selective Gravity
A child suffers.
A victim falls.
A nation mourns.
And half the room checks
which way the wind is blowing.
Not every silence is neutrality.
Some silences are calculations.
Some are negotiations.
Some are fear dressed as strategy.
A mother cries for a daughter stabbed to death,
and half the room studies their shoes.
The other half stands alone,
wondering when murder became
a partisan position.
The people at home notice.
They notice who gets named.
Who gets remembered.
Who gets turned into a talking point.
Who gets turned into nothing at all.
They notice when tragedy becomes a scoreboard.
They notice when grief gets filtered through ideology.
They notice when empathy arrives with conditions.
They notice who can’t stand for victims
but springs to their feet for slogans.
Who sits stone-faced for citizens,
then explodes with applause
for everyone but them.
And they ask a question
no press briefing answers:
Who do you actually stand for?
Because the answer isn’t spoken.
It’s revealed in what makes you rise to your feet,
and in what you’re willing
to stay seated through.
Interlude — For the Ones at Home
In living rooms where the carpet is worn thin,
in kitchens where the linoleum curls at the edges,
there are people who stand without cameras,
without staffers,
without scripts.
They stand for a neighbor’s bad news.
They stand when the hearse passes by.
They stand when a flag goes by,
even if no one else on the block does anymore.
They don’t have handlers.
They don’t have polling.
They just have a sick feeling in their gut
when they watch a room full of power
stay seated on purpose.
Epilogue — The Theater and the Crowd
The chamber empties.
The microphones go dark.
The applause dissolves into hallway chatter.
But in kitchens across the country,
coffee cups pause halfway to lips.
Men stare at televisions.
Women shake their heads.
Workers sit in parked trucks
a few minutes longer than necessary.
Not because they love politics.
Because they are trying to understand
why compassion now looks partisan,
why dignity feels negotiable,
why standing up for human suffering
seems to require permission.
They remember who sat
when victims were mentioned.
They remember who smirked
when families broke on national television.
They remember who only lit up
when the topic shifted away
from the people who pay the price.
They’re not asking for perfection.
They’re asking for sincerity.
They’re asking to recognize themselves
in the people elected to represent them.
They’re asking not to feel invisible
in their own country,
reduced to background extras
in a show staged for donors, factions,
and anyone but them.
They’re asking for leaders
who don’t need a camera lens
to remember how to be human.
Lullaby — When the Room Goes Quiet
Sleep now, weary nation, close your shining eyes,
truth moves slow where the easy lie flies.
Let the lights fade from the marble stage,
let stillness hush the practiced rage.
Dream where the cameras never reach,
where no applause can drown a breach.
Power’s promises drift like sand —
they only listen when people stand.
Rest tonight — but hold this part:
some rise only when it costs no heart.
When morning comes and the noise begins,
remember who stood, and who just pretends.
And if one day the people rise,
not for show but for what’s alive,
the room on the screen will have to follow —
or be swallowed
by its own unblinking eyes.
© 2026 The Prince of Darkness. All rights reserved.
https://unquietrepublic.com
“In an age of performance, sincerity becomes rebellion.”