When Truth Is Feared More Than War
Poems on Democracy, Power, and the Cost of Silence
Overview
When Truth Is Feared More Than War is a political poetry collection that confronts the rising realities of fascism, authoritarianism, racial injustice, democratic erosion, immigration, and the human consequences of state power exercised without accountability. Written from within the present moment, the poems function as both civic record and moral inquiry, asking how fear reshapes law, how silence becomes policy, and how ordinary people are trained to accept extraordinary harm.
These poems resist slogans and partisanships. They are written instead as acts of witness β lyrical, historical, and formally inventive β grounded in attention, memory, and ethical responsibility. The collection examines not only overt acts of domination, but also the quieter mechanisms that allow such power to persist: paperwork, language, spectacle, fatigue, and indifference.
The book insists that democracy rarely collapses all at once. It frays β through compliance, distraction, and the gradual normalization of injustice.
Scope and Structure
The collection is organized into eight thematic sections, each tracing a distinct dimension of political and moral breakdown. Together, they move from foundational erosion through collective reckoning, the civic psyche, and moral reflection, mapping how power operates both publicly and privately, and how resistance begins with attention.
