Bless the lies

Ah, free speech,

the wild bouquet of our radical freedom,

the great existential puzzle piece

we hold up to the light,

as if speech itself were not absurd enough.

To speak or not to speak—

that’s never really the question.

It’s always to speak,

to hurl our words like confetti

into the wind of the world's indifference,

to hear them scatter

into the void we have all come to love.

And what of shouting “fire” in the theater,

the heads snapping to attention,

the chaos unfurling like a flag in a storm?

Of course, you could do it,

because we can do anything—

isn’t that what freedom is?

But in the aftermath,

as people tumble like dominoes,

you are left with that old companion,

the one Sartre always warned us about:

responsibility.

You’ll feel it settle on your shoulders

like a long winter coat

you forgot to take off at the door.

Then, there’s disinformation—

that fever dream of the Internet,

where Bill Gates has become your digital tailor

and the reptilian overlords

slither into your Twitter feed.

The moon is a giant paper lantern,

hung up by the hands of conspirators,

and somewhere out there,

an election is stolen by shadows.

It’s all absurd, of course,

but somehow essential,

because in our lies,

we remember we are free—

that we can still paint

the empty canvas of the world

with whatever feverish brushstrokes we choose,

filling the silence

before it fills us.

Ah yes, the silence—

that yawning mouth of censorship,

hovering like a guillotine over our words,

ready to sever the thin thread

of chaos we cling to.

Better a world of babbling fools

than one where no sound is heard,

for silence is death,

and in death, we cannot rage.

So let them speak,

the lunatics, the conspiracy theorists,

the ones who twist the truth

like a balloon animal at a carnival.

Let them have their say,

for in their voices,

we hear the faint echo of our own.

And when the censors come,

let us rage,

let us shout until our throats burn,

even though we know,

in the end,

nothing answers back—

nothing ever does.