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The Sum of All Fears

“Oppressive government is fiercer than a tiger.”

—Confucius

Psst. Be careful what you post online.
The slightest threat, even made in jest,
And alphabet men will don the armored vest.
Your life’s a dossier to data-mine.
 
Your guilt’s a given, and they don’t have to prove
It. Modus operandi—strike at dawn
With automatic weapons fully drawn—
You might be armed and make a sudden move.
 
It’s government—the sum of all fears.
Surrounded—now they have you in their sights.
Whatever happened to habeas corpus? Rights?
Seems they’ve disappeared these past few years.
 
You’re still holed up inside? The windows smash.
A vet? Disabled? Whatever. They don’t care.
The acrid smell of smoke-bombs fills the air.
There’s banging, yells; and then, a muzzle flash.
 
What’s scary is the message that they send.
They have the means to justify the end.

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A Reach Too Far

The pretext they abuse is climate “science”
To regulate the use of each appliance,
And government expects your full compliance.
 
Nothing’s sacred: incandescent light,
A working toilet, washers, dryers, the right
To use a gas stove. They have the might,
 
And use their “regs” to dictate how we live,
Through taxes that we give and give and give.
Our money—spent like water through a sieve!
 
We’re much too quiet in our acquiescence
Of mandates forcing sudden obsolescence.
The government’s become an intumescence:
 
A bloated and entrenched bureaucracy;
A rules-for-thee-not-me plutocracy
Of deals and graft and rank hypocrisy!

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Cheryl Corey is a Connecticut poet. She is also an author of short stories, a novella, and recently completed a novel.

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30 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Those are great shots, Cheryl, perfectly aimed and deadly on target! Oh, maybe I should be more careful! Never mind, they are excellent classical critiques in word and thought.

    Reply
    • Cheryl Corey

      Thanks, Roy. The government is doing far too many of these raids. They show up with overwhelming force, and they’re way too trigger-happy. In the case of the man who allegedly threatened to kill Biden, the man was obese and could hardly get around. He was probably just blowing smoke and could easily have been stopped if he left his house. In the case of the veteran, his mother answered the door and was hustled away. When she asked what her son had done wrong, the feds said it was “none of your business”. Supposedly he was wanted in connection with a gas station shooting. His mother said that he wasn’t even armed. The media could care less as long as it’s just “poor white trash”.

      Reply
    • Cheryl Corey

      Russel, I think I’ve barely scratched the surface. California’s the worst offender. I recently read that they want to meterize private wells and sell the water back to the homeowners!

      Reply
  4. Margaret Coats

    “The Sum of All Fears” is one of the scariest poems I ever read. And, Cheryl, you’ve written it with appropriate formal artistry. The quatrains are ominously closed cells (abba) until the final couplet concludes with “the end.” There you twist the notion of “the end justifying the means” in darkest contortion. Within the poem the title line, “It’s government–the sum of all fears” lacks a syllable and a stress. We need fearful silence somewhere for it to scan, or we could stretch “awe-all.”

    With “A Reach Too Far” you extend the thought by providing a reason for government to search every house for illicit toasters or evidence of using fireplaces without carbon credit. “Intumescence” is a word civil overseers will have to look up!

    Reply
  6. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Cheryl, well done for speaking up and out in hard-hitting and engaging poetry that lets us know exactly who we are being governed by here on earth. Your words are a warning to all those scared by them. A warning that it’s time to stand up and tell the truth before the world gets even scarier. No person looking beyond the iron-fisted government for answers should be scared. “You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” is a game changer for the bullies and for those who are sick of being bullied. Thank you for your creativity and forthright honesty.

    Reply
    • Cheryl Corey

      I can’t help but notice, Susan, that a great deal of our poetry these days is in response to the current (disturbing) state of our culture, society, and politics. To be able to express our concerns through formal verse, so much the better.

      Reply
  7. Cheryl A Corey

    Margaret, when I wrote “It’s government…”, my intention was for “all fears” to have extra emphasis. Perhaps I could have done something differently such as italics or underline to make that more clear. “Intumescence”, from French “intumescere”, meaning to swell up, was a new word for me as well. It suited my thought process — that bloated government’s like a giant pustule or lipoma.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      A tumor, to go back to the root. And “It’s government–the sum of all fears” should not be different. Your leaving of rhythmic space for extra emphasis is noticeable, as I was noticing!

      Reply
  8. C.B. Anderson

    You, Cheryl, are really dialed in on what is going on, I loved these, and I hope you keep yourself safe.

    Reply
    • Cheryl Corey

      It’s become rather risky, and maybe a bit dangerous, to speak out against the current regime. Who knows, they may have files on all of us.

      Reply
  9. Joseph S. Salemi

    Our current government is now the new Third Reich with a rainbow flag. And it is no accident that the rainbow flag has many colors, but not white.

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      I agree, except for one thing: To call them the Third Reich is too kind. Everything about today’s culture makes the Third Reich look trivial by comparison. Modern culture has achieved victories the Nazis couldn’t even have dreamed of achieving—nearly two billion dead worldwide in the Abortion Holocaust, destroying the faith of Christians after it survived Communism, changing many countries worldwide to its own side…

      I wish more people on our side had the moral clarity to hold the surrounding culture in even greater contempt than the Nazis. People who claim to be on the side of right have found it offensive that I even compare the Left to the Nazis. I tell them, “Then it’s time to take a good, hard look at what side you’re really on.” I have no use for people who don’t have the guts to call evil what it is.

      I wonder, if the Nazis had won World War II, would their culture have ever achieved the level of evil that ours has?

      Reply
  10. Cynthia Erlandson

    These poems excellently express important (and scary) truths. Thank you, Cheryl.

    Reply
  11. Yael

    Both poems are very astute in their observations of current cultural trends, and they serve as a warning to young people who may not be aware of these trends yet. Nicely done, I hope that the circulation of your poems will reach beyond the choir and get to those who could benefit from the information.

    Reply
  12. Brian A. Yapko

    Cheryl, brava for taking a courageous moral stand through very fine poetry. You convey urgency in the driving force of your meter and your use of rhyme is stellar — I’m impressed by your “science/appliance/compliance” rhymes. But I’m even more impressed by your almost shocking candor. Well done!

    Reply
    • Cheryl Corey

      At times my rhymes are a happy accident; but working in form pushes me to use my pea brain.

      Reply
  13. Joseph S. Salemi

    Yael is correct in a great many details. I can give a dozen examples, just offhand, of how we are like the Third Reich. Let’s enumerate:

    1) Massive, out-of-control, tyrannical bureaucracies that interfere in every aspect of our lives.
    2) The deliberate fostering of unnecessary wars everywhere (Kosovo, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan).
    3) The promotion and funding of constant anti-Christian propaganda.
    4) Utter disregard of individual liberties and protections, as instanced by Cheryl Corey’s poem.
    5) The persecution of political dissidents by “lawfare” and litigation.
    6) Rigged elections that one is not allowed to protest or demonstrate against.
    7) Deliberate denigration of and sanctioned bigotry against a specific race (white Europeans).
    8) A Deep-State network of permanent office holders who cannot be dislodged.
    9) State-sanctioned mass murder of human beings (abortion).
    10) Politicized armed forces that are prepared to function as an SS or an SA against anyone at all who dares to question or criticize government policy.
    11) The persistent and unending attempt to disarm the population.
    12) The absolute and undisguised arrogance of those who are in power.

    Yeah — Germany was in ruins, and the Wehrmacht was defeated. But the Nazis won the war.

    And don’t think the Germans don’t know it, since they still act as dictatorial Gauleiters towards the smaller states in the E.U.

    Reply
    • Cheryl Corey

      You’re absolutely right. As the saying goes, the fish rots from the head down. The tyranny is not only at the federal, but also at the state level. Citizens need to constantly keep vigilance and fight back. When you add cultural decadence, erasure of our common history, and barbarians at the gate, it does not bode well for the future.

      Reply
    • Julian D. Woodruff

      A good list. Maybe one could add something about the state of public education and public libraries, but this would probably be what one would suppose from reading the list as it is.

      Reply
  14. Mark Stellinga

    Cheryl, wonderful pieces both, your ‘pea brain’ is in excellent form, will watch for more of your work – we think alike –

    Reply
  15. Mike Bryant

    Thank you Cheryl for artistically presenting truth and beauty in effective and affecting poetry.
    Ain’t it great to be a part of SCP where free speech still reigns?

    Russel Brand, a complete puzzle to me, has recently laid out our terrible situation in a few words:

    If you have an economic system in which pharmaceutical companies benefit hugely from medical emergencies, where a military industrial complex benefits from war, where energy companies benefit from energy crises, you are going to generate states of perpetual crisis where the interests of ordinary people separate from the interests of the elites.

    The inconvenient truth is that every crisis is created by those elites. If somewhere in the back of your mind you are thinking, “Well, I don’t know about that, Mike. I think that the (fill in the blank) crisis is something that only a strong, worldwide government can manage.” Then the psyops have crept into your brain.
    God help us all!

    Reply
  16. Julian D. Woodruff

    It’s just as you effectively say, Cheryl.
    The government’s truly the sum of all fears.
    Weed-like, that sum’s multiplied over the years.
    And yet we dare say, “Throw them out on their ears!” (?)

    Reply

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