Danny Shot
Catching Your Breath in a Burning House
My politics can be summed up
in two words: Anti Fascist
or Antifa if you insist on one.
We’re not supposed to talk politics
at the high school reunion.
Fine. We’ll skip the reunion.
We’ll meet where we can laugh,
in another town, perhaps another time.
We’re not permitted to call them fascists anymore,
but their boots echo loud, shiny and stomping
through the halls of media giants,
corridors of white shoe law firms,
Centers for Disease Control,
through classrooms and dormitories,
into your child’s consciousness.
You ask what does courage looks like?
It’s not a cape, or a championship belt.
It’s definitely not a gun.
Maybe a weary janitor
refusing to mop up blood
that wasn’t an accident.
It could be a talk show host
unwilling to be silenced.
Sometimes it’s a librarian
who leaves banned books
where kids can find them.
We’ve seen this movie before,
in Berlin, Moscow, Imperial Japan,
Charlottesville, Kabul, Jerusalem.
Fascism and violence march lockstep
hand in hand, call it genocide if you dare.
The subways still run, gas is cheap,
the Marvel Universe remains intact,
Tech stocks soar to Olympian heights,
Amazon Prime delivers next day,
Planet Fitness always a deal,
supermarket shelves remain full
with inflated coffee, bread, and meat.
No one is innocent
who chooses not to see.
Teachers try to teach
history or science
in whispered syllables
like contraband jazz.
Don’t wait for the uniforms to change.
They already have.
Now they wear masks,
and flags on their lapels,
and carry guns with the safety off
in fear for their lives.
Courage is not the absence of fear –
it’s carrying that fear into the courthouse,
the classroom, the library
the voting booth
and into the streets.
Remember bullies are cowards at heart.
You are not insignificant.
Fascists only can win
when you believe you are small.
When they say unity,
ask under whose rule?
When they chant freedom,
count the cages holding
brown workers and children.
Then, when you feel lost
stand up anyway,
even if you tremble
even if your voice shakes.
Take a deep breath
make yourself breathe again
and again, and again.
Don’t ever stop caring or breathing
in this fucking burning house.
My Brechtian Day
“Don’t start with the good old things,
but the bad new ones,”
he said in my dream last night.
So, here’s to Amazon warehouses,
banks foreclosing our neighbors,
to poets writing grant proposals, and
congress collecting unearned pay.
To killer drones from outer space,
to Karoline Leavitt’s lyin’ eyes –
dollar signs shining in expectation
of upcoming tell all book deal.
To factories reopened as condos,
same smokestacks, new rooftop bars,
to the War Department’s illegal strikes,
brought to you by the same folks
who think “What could ever go wrong?”
Mother Courage reminds us
that profit comes at a cost:
“And in our graves we shall find peace
unless the war goes on in Hell.”
Maybe the show goes on in the grocery
store line, where the self-checkout counters
silently judge our scruples or lack thereof,
in the landlord’s texts, sent from a yacht
named Mar a Lago.
Bertolt, you’d laugh at us,
at our irony so thick it’s tragic.
Show the audience the strings,
but make them dance anyway.
The show must go on –
in the eyes of the security guard
posted in front of the synagogue,
wondering if he too is part
of the performance,
in the tired faces of teenagers
staring at overworked screens
anxiously awaiting whatever
Act Two might have in store –
probably audience participation, and
no one looks forward to that day.
Shrugged Shoulders
He lies to the camera
with the confidence of a man
who’s never been told no.
They know he’s lying,
we know he’s lying,
he knows he’s lying.
We shrug our shoulders
once again and move on.
Her voice polished
like the golden cross
emblazoned on her chest,
the perfect spokeswoman
gurgling up a fantasy unrelated
to any semblance of reality.
We make jokes about them,
the way people joke about
a dimwitted cousin
or a leak in the roof –
ha ha, very funny,
until that cousin gets a gun,
until the ceiling caves in.
Everyone knows –
the bartender, the soccer mom,
bus driver, small-town mayor,
factory worker, waitress, barista,
guidance counselor, fashion designer,
We all know, knowing is easy here.
Doing is hard. So we shrug, make jokes,
pretend the cracks in the wall are part
of the décor and truly let the light shine in.
The streetlights buzz their nervous hum,
in this haunted place we live
in this country we let happen.
We smile, we nod, hands in pockets,
walking perpetual streets of shrugged
shoulders, waiting for someone else
to throw the first punch.
Danny Shot’s new collection of poems, The Jersey Slide was published in the fall of 2025 by CavanKerry Press. His prose, collected in Night Bird Flying was published in February 2025 by Roadside Press. WORKS was published in 2018 also by CavanKerry Press. Danny is a New Generation Beat Poet Laureate (2024-Lifetime), and Poet in Residence of the Hoboken Historical Museum. Danny Shot was the longtime publisher and editor of Long Shot arts and literary magazine, which he founded along with Eliot Katz in 1982 in New Brunswick, NJ. More information can be found on his website: dannyshot.com