The man was ranting
Belly on fire
The face of a furnace
Eyes cracking from what he’s seen
Of too many rounds of effort and disappointment.
Of doing the ‘right’ thing.

The regulations too pricey to abide by
Too pricey not to
Fined, taxed, blocked
Every way he turns.

He used to run a business in town
Could support his wife and child.
Even took a holiday once a year.

Now he can barely keep the lights on.

Men like him are being squeezed
Suffocated in their sleep.

He used to be the most gracious host
His bar filled with life, with laughter and
Lively banter.

I’d never seen him like this.
Eaten the inside, spitting his words like puss into the unsympathetic air
His friends looking on with quiet helplessness.
Nodding.

I this the rage of revolution?
This raw, cry of injustice?

If it is anger that is the enemy
Then what of apathy
That allows good men like him
To fall into slow starvation?

Is apathy not the greater evil?
That pulls out a chair for evil to get comfortable?

The social contract was broken long ago.

Men like him signed their names with honour.
And now he sees the trickery.
The small print of the tricksters
Circling like flies to rotting fruit.

Now reduced to something he never thought he’d be.
Impotent.
Broken.
Unable to provide.

There is shame in his anger,
Shame and incomprehension.
How did this happen?

It is staggeringly hard to watch.

He rails against the source of a vast betrayal that he cannot penetrate
But feels in his gut, like an ugly weighted stone.
Crushing all the space in which his dignity once danced.

The stone whispers
“Give in to despair. It is the only road for the small.”

There is a Leviathan in this bar.
Staring him down with a single unflinching, unfeeling eye.
He holds no cards.
And yet something in him can’t quit.

But a man who realizes that he got played.
Is not yet a revolutionary.

Anger, rage, this is not courage
But without it who will act?
Not the nodding men.
Not them.

Give him a leader, human, imperfect, but ready to lose
Everything for the ranting man.

Give him a reason to believe.
That this is not how it ends.