The Morning After

I woke up at 4:00 am today, unable unable to sleep. Rain fell outside. Was God crying? Or urinating on us all? How could a compassionate, just God sanction this election?  Most Christian Evangelicals voted for Trump, a complete betrayal of their religious beliefs. In their hypocritical hearts, they know Trump's religious gestures are mere theater. Never has it been more tempting to boldly proclaim the virtue of atheism.

A panic attack kept me awake. Vaguely, I recall the fear constrict my chest and knew instinctively that it was the same fear Trump's supporters felt. They surrendered to this animalistic drive, irrational by nature, at the polls yesterday. It was an epiphany: understanding this fear was a key to penetrating the dark, unspeakable mystery of our national political climate. How each of us responds to this fear individually will affect the course of our country, and in turn, the world.

I dressed for work as if for a funeral, all in gray - gray suit, gray tie, gray shirt - gray like the cloudy day that was dawning and still I moved about as if in a bad dream, slowly.  To deny reality is human. Uneducated racists do not have a monopoly on denial. But my clock kept ticking. Because I could accept the possibility that I would be late for work, I admitted I was awake. I had lived through what history will record as our worst election for all its resemblance to 1932 Germany.

Stepping outside, the fear subsided but still lingered. It cast a small shadow in me, like the shadow of leaves on pavement after the rain.  What I did with this fear was my own burden. So I secured the fear, until I could regain my reason, by using a talisman.

I dressed in mourning because something died last night, a grand experiment on tolerance unique in history.  But I placed a small, white handkerchief in my breast jacket pocket. The Christians - the authentic ones - have a story about Jesus who survived death and will one day return. Only their hope sustains that story. The thin, white line in my breast pocket was my own talisman of hope. Perhaps America will return from death some day. And perhaps how we vanquish the animal fear will usher the resurrection. But for today I just need to touch the white fabric often, to navigate the sadness until I can again think.

Kanye

I resist

the commodification
of the struggle to define
the self;
I am not a brand -
from where I stand,
no man, no woman,
or rock,
or bird,
or tree,
can truly see
to understand
the struggle is not in blood,
not in riches or glamorous fame,
but in language, in memory,
in the past that never was
and forever will be.

She repeated the sentence three times
To herself in the morning, stopping
On each line for emphasis,
While breakfast was served on her balcony,
The fresh squeezed orange juice
Cooler than the wind from the sea.

Before her tea at three,
To the reporter,
To the photographer,
To the publisher,
To the maid:
The long sentence in every receptive ear
Seemed to steer clear of any risk
Of meaning.

The unknown safety of not thinking
Keeps us while we sleep
With eyes wide open:
Protection from the standing rock,
The bent, old tree,
The incomprehensible
Wind from the sea.

Hourglass

I grow tired
And the hour is getting late;
The time withers for youthful dreams
I hoped would make life great –

Too late to scale the highest peaks

Or swim the widest channel
Or other wondrous feats;
Too late to take a child in hand,
Raise a fine woman or a man.

If still left to me were one hundred years
I still would not find the courage or time
To conquer my fears -

Still the manuscript would lay in tatters,
Still I’d dwell on what doesn’t matter,
Still the trip to that distant land
Would be just talk with a drink in hand.

And as I drain my glass with somber face
In a clean, well-lighted place,
I know my love tonight will not appear.
Perhaps, if time should still remain,
I will find you here, this time, next year.

Dissent

If a nation
Founded on the ideal - the sublime appeal -
Of individual liberty, should shine and not
Vanish from the earth,
Then at its hour of birth, the nation should relent,
That seeds of liberty must also sprout dissent.

And, if in that shout of contradiction,
Should be raised a moral vision
To shake our institutions
At their innermost foundations,
Then should we recall
That dissent seeks to forestall the fall
Of those dear and cherished freedoms.

A far cry from the critic
Who would redesign our structures
Is the nihilist who furthers
A complete and utter rupture -
That ideological arsonist
Who would burn the entire edifice
Of our popular democracy.

Therefore let us pray we don't confuse,
Confound, misunderstand.
The dissenter who may take a stand
Against popular but harsh opinion
Is no demagogue's minion.
The nation cannot find its way
If dissenters face our wrath.
They struggle in their way to say
That we stray off our rightful path.

Spring Rain

After the rain
Of days and melancholy days,
When the wet sheen on all the world
Reflects a dull spring sky,
Still the swollen green of dripping plants,
With the shiniest indifference,
Demands your full attention.

By the sidewalk, the milky white of dogwood,
In a garden, the tender tone of roses,
And the lilies scatter on a lawn
In speckled yellow splendor:
All seek to draw the eye
From the pensive gray of sky.

To venture out at dawn
And hear the song of sparrows
Hiding in the great, green tops
Of sturdy oak and slender willow,
Branches swaying, dripping rain
Like green low-lying clouds -

Sight and scent and sound that calls -
The bustling of no crowd:
Nature's vigor, soon to die,
Its fleeting moment leaves no doubt,
Our blood is earth, our soul is sky.

Worldwide Web

You can project
Your content here:
Your hope, your fear. 

This space can be
Your preferred candidate,
Your Superman,
Your Jesus. 

What you want me to be, I cannot,
Because I already am. 

In my mind there is a land
Where we can walk together.
Flowers in a field gathered;
Like us, they sway and dance,
Sprung from seeds scattered
By the fickle winds of chance.

 

 

Greenwood

Greenwood
Was a cemetery for the colored,
A place where the pale-colored bones
Of black folk
Would not through ages rot
Near the pale-colored bones
Of white folk.

And the spirits of the dead
Linger and lament:
Wealth begets more wealth.
Want begets more want.

These days Greenwood
Is a haunt:
Weeds and ivy choke
The graves among the oak.

And the spirits of the dead
Linger and lament:
Wealth begets more wealth.
Want begets more want.

The white man’s marker taunts,
From its shining grave upon a hill,
That declaration of segregation
That was Greenwood,
Now fallen mute and still.

And the spirits of the dead
Linger and lament:
Wealth begets more wealth.
Want begets more want.

Why care for the plots of the dead
When we can scarcely tend the living?

To right the ancient wrongs
Among the living poor today
Would not undo the lynching.
In the well-kept tombs
Of the martyred dead
Is the silence of forgiving.