Strongest I've Ever
But silent to the Pressure
To perform, to side,
To Stand, collide.

A curious Genesis,
A Sliver of Spine
Behind keystrokes, yet no Pine.
In the flesh to face,
A self-righteous rat race.

Wandering still
Unable to kill
His doubt, his line
Without divine.

Imperium calls
Tear down these walls
​And look each other in the eye.

It is here that I ponder,
Among quill and nail,
The failings of our tribe,
Erecting a crooked veil.

They came, you see, 
Not in troves or waves,
They came from basements,
Their own personal caves.

They came shouting hate,
Clawed and vain,
And we drove them back
From whence they came.

And for a time,
The Enlightened did rule,
But our tolerance, I fear, 
Has painted us fool.

For in the caves and the swamps,
Each troll we sent,
Found a tribe of their own,
Views crooked and bent.

So when a bulbous fop,
Appeared godsent,
He was their rally, their king, their echo,
They met.

And our tolerance bred,
An army of poison,
Allowed their echoes without percussion, 
A miasma of what we thought long dead.
A necromancy; horrid and true.

And my pain is found in history's sake,
When all I did was make.
I cleaned it up, I tidied my room,
And I didn't feed the troll, 
But I didn't spell his doom.

And this acquiescence,
In the name of Enlightenment,
I fear has helped breed,
The very nightmare we told would never succeed.

When they were few,
We were tolerant and clean,
But now they are many,
Views divisive and obscene.

And so this Bard,
At only the start of his journey,
Hangs up his lute in favor of sword,
And armor, and shield,
And wades into the comment section.

And in case the metaphor 
Has fallen unheard,
There is no side but our fellow people,
And the necromancers raising ideas that only hurt are no longer tolerated.
The time for tolerance has ended.  Ignorance and inaction has led us here.
The war for the soul of the nation has begun.
Time to crush hate where it stands.
And maybe then, from the ashes, this Bard will finally be proud to be a part of it.