benign

in days overwrought
painted with bigotry and hate
it becomes so easy to equate
the benign with the banal
thoughts and prayers
kind but underwhelming
no action by authority
those lacking
both courage and conviction
they couch their cowardice
in diction devout
or spout the rhetoric of fear
forgetting the tenets
they claim to hold dear
the gyre widens indeed
as we, the body politic, have become
the rough beast slouching