Editor’s Note: Michael’s essay appeals to Americans to heed Orwell’s prophetic work 1984, and through “Document 14,” Michael draws attention to the breakdown of society as we know it today.

About This Poem’s Title

Dear Reader,

“Document 14,” deliberately vague, honors George Orwell (1903-1951), the British author and Spanish Civil War combatant whose dystopian novel 1984, published in 1949, foresaw our fractured age of surveillance technology, “alternative facts” as code words masking lies, staffers shielding elected leaders from the people, greed and fascist white supremacy infusing our representative democracy.

Orwell also explored individuals’ alienation from communal activities and institutions, the lure of fleeting diversions for refuge from standard social concerns like racism and poverty, and existential threats like endless wars and climate change. Mundane affronts, he knew, would ignite repressed rage.

“War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery” and “Ignorance is Strength,” mantras of ruling elites in Orwell’s book, are known now, too. Afghanistan and Iraq plus Somalia, Russia and Ukraine wreck lives, waste funds, leave many here without health care, food or home. Million dollar settlements for documented police misconduct drain resources that should enhance the common good.

President George W. Bush boasted in a public address of having reached the White House with a mediocre C+ college average.

The twice impeached, four times indicted President Donald J. Trump calls Charlottesville’s torch-wielding marchers and the violent Capitol insurrectionists “good people,” a politically consequential linguistic perversion and lie.

Orwell’s book has worn well with time. Mr. Patrick, the English teacher of my junior year at New York City’s Bronx High School of Science, exposed me to 1984 in 1969, when the normalcy of political activism through my teen years on Manhattan’s Upper West Side augured well for the future.

President Richard Nixon’s Watergate abuses and resignation in the seventies preceded President Ronald Reagan’s Bitburg Nazi tribute and illegal Nicaragua Contra War in the eighties. Both moved us toward our polarized present time.

The poem cites disparate human sights and sounds that I detect as my rescue dog and I pass along our Brooklyn streets and sidewalks, or as I alone ride subways. The anonymous voices of “Document 14” portray the visceral reactions that people unknown to one another have in common. “This never happens in Europe, only here,” a Mexican neighbor murmured nearby as we awaited our turn to cross Brooklyn’s car-congested Ocean Parkway amidst impatient drivers’ fruitless horn cacophony.

I sense that the conduct I observe and describe in “Document 14” is akin to what moved Orwell to put pen to paper or fingertips to a manual typing keyboard to produce his prescient piece. I cannot ask the departed British author, but perhaps you will tell me whether it seems so.

The poem’s end is positive; we have the latent power and potential to build a better world. But the time for thoughtful, urgent, concerted and collaborative acts is now. I feel sure that Orwell would agree. I trust that you will, too.

Thanks for your attention. My best to you and yours.

— Mike McQuillan

Document 14

Foul air from northern fires foreshadows species’ ends.
Clouds of undulating amber clog expansive airport sky.
Sleek Uber’s rise to highway’s crest spills terse driver’s plaintive cry,
To the One who is Eternal while God averts the Eye.
Incessant coughing? Penance for all who live the lie.
Sidle down that sidewalk. Plug up eager ears.
Cellphone screen lures bleary eyes, remorse releases tears.
Devices hide the homeless cries. Compassion disappears.
NPR may tell you what has happened in the war.
ESPN disgorges baseball highlights with the score.
Poisoned air’s a warning, friend, that climate threats are real.
How soon folks put the mask aside, let Covid vaccines lapse.
Elders replicated Vietnam’s debacle in Afghanistan’s collapse.
Will billions more for Ukraine save it from a fall?
Who will feed our land of plenty’s hungry? Leaders ignore all:
Living wage? Too costly! Lurid tabloid headlines show that crime is on the rise!
Ignore the research studies citing homicide’s demise.
Later for the candy migrant mama sells on trains.
Spit shining dusty wingtips might earn her tainted coins.
Money for the homeless just exacerbates their pain.
Smoke or drink that follows keeps their lives the same.
Cops, keep them off our subways, especially to sleep!
Let them stay in shelters till they get up on their feet.
I have struggles too, you see. Deadlines in the office.
Distractions when I’m home. Did I work enough?
Too long at lunch? The city’s recent rent hike put my budget in a crunch.

It’s cocktails with a friend at night. Back home I stream a show.
I dislike the world’s direction. How to change it, I don’t know.
We’re polarized like magnets. Fascist threats dissolve King’s Dream.
Scant hope flows from protest scene.
Citizens United raised the powers of the rich.
Congress heeds the greedy calls but hides within
Its august office buildings when our side fills their hallowed halls.
Local solons, also shielded by the staff, treat outsized
Wealth as wheat, dismiss us as chaff. Elders proved that we gain power
When we size up one another with an empathetic eye.
Extend your hand, stride forward as we set about a plan.
Forego your building brands. Restore the common good.
Stay true to augment what we have as one. Trust benefits accrue.
The amber cloud was prelude. Beware the hurricane.
We can’t yet touch the miser class that profits from despair.
But history recycles lessons: Corruption’s bills come due.