What happens when the light goes out

Nothing.

His plucked nails will still hurt,
but we won't see him hurt.

Heads will still be rolling on the cement,
hung in the subways, blood-stained
and cold and rot-scented,
but our eyes won't tear up at that image.

We will still be hunching our backs
for the boots of policemen, for
the claws of poverty to dig deeper
and deeper and
deeper,
except, in the darkness, nobody will get offended.
A king will still be raping his slaves,
but the truth and the blood on
their pale faces will be silently erased once
he's finished.

A kid will still be painting birds,
she'll still paint them
in the holes of cannons,
on the tops of tanks,
amidst the crowd of bullets,
near her father and above his helmet,
warbling their last songs,
but we won't have to listen to their stories.

A lover will still be running,
but he won't realize that he hasn't escaped yet,
just crossed the distance
his long chains allowed.

Only when
there's no light.

There's no light. Sometimes, you
just need to turn it off.