I haven’t known what to do with this despair. The last three years seem to be repeated in everyone else’s experience.  Isolation.  Staying safe, staying calm.  Getting Covid.  Wearing masks, wearing masks, wearing masks. And then not wearing masks. We didn’t know what to do. We don’t know how it will end.  How can we make a difference?

Our families turned upside down. Working from home with child care. Working from home with no child care. Not working. Children learning remotely or not learning at all.  Remote workers, remote lives.

Trump acting like a 5-year old.  Trump acting like a psychopath.  Our government run by crazy men mostly, (some women) who have no respect for facts, the rule of law, the future of democracy, the system that requires fair elections.   What could happen to our country?  What will happen next?  Impeachment, sedition, civil war?

The planet on fire.  Species disappearing. What is the future of our planet?  Women treated as second class citizens. Black men murdered in plain sight. It’s been hard to want to live in the United States of America.

Stay calm, breathe deeply, write, sleep, pray, meditate, make art.  MAKE ART, MEDITATE

This summer I joined a workshop called Writing on the Wall at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland with Kathleen Ellis. It was cathartic. I would not just complain, or whine, but rather study other artists, in other times, in other places speaking out, making art that said NO, I WON’T GO ALONG WITH THIS! Or I could channel other poets – Yeats, and Picasso, William Carlos Williams – and try to find some place to put all the misery.

There were so many examples. What I find some comfort in is that we’ve been here before. It’s the human condition to want power, and it’s our everyday responsibility to speak out against power, to be angry, or question the world, the government, the people who want to have power over the greater good.

It’s not that life changed, really.  But I felt I had some company, compatriots in this morass of bad news.  Here’s what I wrote in Kathleen Ellis’ workshop:

Lies

I am afraid aren’t you    how will it end     my friend    these lies

we’re told   misdirection from the truth     like birds that trick you

into leaving them alone     lies about women’s bodies     lies about

strangers     lies of despots     why tell a lie if not to gain the upper

hand     lies about taxes     my father always said he never lied

because he didn’t want to remember what he said     lies about

good men    and about evil men    lies about guns     moral lies

to scare children     lies to cover your own mistakes    my lips

burnt from the everlasting lies spread against the heating planet

my fingers forever smudged with newsprint lies     my ears

hear conspiracy lies     lies repeated and repeated and repeated

which is the lie and which the truth    only night is respite from

the day’s bedlam     and still I lie    dreaming    and afraid

I’ll be reading with all these other fine poets tomorrow afternoon. Maybe you’ll find your way to join me.