Dissidence

The blankness of the many
Soldiers and police, armed flesh
Enacting obedience,

Carrying out the orders
To seize, thwart, murder, torture
Whoever the state desires—

Often former higher-ups,
Business tycoons, generals,
Politicians fallen out

With others of their own kind—
It’s fascinating. People,
These enforcers are people,

Every single one of them.
Women birthed them. They grew up
From infancy through childhood.

Sometime in young adulthood
They signed up for uniforms
And weaponry, harsh training,

Unswerving obedience,
Who cares what musical chairs
Keep scraping over their heads?

Dissidents are also such
Individual humans
Who sometimes form masses, but

You’ll know why a dissident
Dissents. Dissidents declare
Their reasons, their intentions,

Whereas soldiers and police
Vanish under those helmets—
Shadowed eyes, shadowed faces,

Closed mouths, mute, identical
As their training and outfits
Could make them, identical

As they can manage themselves.
Every time you see a troop
Wading into protestors,

Carting off a dissident,
Squint hard at these embodied
Instruments of state power,

One body each, one brain each,
Each a set of glands, organs,
Bones, same as each dissident,

Same as the persons in charge,
Whoever’s in charge right now—
These are individuals,

Individual humans
Coordinating to crush
Individual humans

With whom they may have, themselves,
No violent history,
No personal arguments.

Is anything different,
Consistently different,
Between human enforcers

And human dissidents? What?
What is it? What if death squads,
Elite guards, secret police

Have no predictable twist
That sets them apart, marks them
Particularly for this?

Every soldier could as well
Have become a dissident,
And yet . . . they’re obedient.