Eight months ago, when house arrest began,
I tried to learn to only touch my face
at home alone and clean. My hygiene plan
involved increasing time inside my place,
enduring masking when around a man
or woman I don’t know, and no embrace
beyond my little bubble. That was then.
I’ve lately lapsed, and touch my face again.
(Ottava Rima)
Like any proper toddler, he wants clear
distinctions: black & white and solid lines.
Our task as guides is showing him our sphere
is not that neat. Existence intertwines,
and boundaries are artificial walls.
Maturing means we live with shades of gray.
Accepting rites, obeying protocols,
make pageants while they shoo the truth away.
But recently, when cheering for the team
(“Yay Blue!” he danced, with three relieved adults),
he asked me why we’re glad, his face agleam.
And I was pleased to summarize results –
We had a bad man for our president.
We fired him for good. That’s what it meant.
I felt so humbled as I watched returns,
accepting that I hadn’t any clue
to how the half who voted for him work.
I’ve failed to feel and write someone who spurns
the facts for magic thinking, and the true
for Puritan simplistic blue-law murk.
I felt uneasy as I watched results –
anxiety and flashbacks roiled me:
my neck compressed, my innards seemed to twist.
Enduring hours of unsteady pulse,
I told myself with aging certainty:
“I won’t be sick,” relaxing gut and fist.
I’ll need more time if I’m to understand.
I’ll guard my health till then with self-command.
Irrelevant is how he’s been to me,
a would-be bully powered on hot air.
He’s had four years of free publicity
while wasting us. Nobody now should care
about the raves, his lies, conspiracy,
or any argument for playing fair.
Please join me in ignoring him as well,
abandoned to a tantrum in his cell.
(Ottava Rima)
Remember Better Dead Than Red?
We used to hear the line a lot
when we were young and war was not,
when Communism pulled ahead
and battles waged were Cold instead.
Well that was long ago. The Wall
is gone. Some thought we’d won it all,
but now that states are Red or Blue,
and folks and businesses have hue,
it seems to me that reds appall.
(Decima)
I wake on Saturdays away from home,
so if I’m to maintain my posting streak
of publishing a daily lockdown poem,
then Friday’s my occasion, every week,
to schedule the meter in advance.
But I mistrust the algorithm’s deeds.
I long to give my verse at least a chance,
but often mine don’t make the Reader feeds.
It happens with a same-day sonnet too,
but then I can repost to catch a yes.
When I’m away from my home office, you
may fail to see what’s not in RSS.
I’ve taken to selecting lesser verse
for Saturday, to dull the WordPress curse.
I fail to understand, although I’ve tried,
why millions of my countrymen support
a leader with no compass, who can’t guide,
who won’t seek any wisdom or resort
to knowledge, education, open mind,
or building bridges virtual or real.
I leave attempted empathy behind –
today I revel in contempt’s appeal.
Is that a swath of Puritans I see?
Great plains of ignorance between our shores?
A pale-faced chasm of conspiracy?
Perspective that sees witches and adores
the simple answers? I cannot relate
to half our voters advocating hate.
“I know what you’re about to say to me.”
My father’d interrupt with words like those
when we grew heated. Furious I’d be,
but almost stopped, amazed at how he chose
to interact, predicting wrong, and close
the gate to any chance to understand
his daughter, bound to anger in her throes
of passion, sure to lose her self-command.
(Huitain)
When things keep happening that boggle me,
between myself and one I dearly love,
when doors are slammed and chairs are shoved, and we
appear to live on different worlds, above
all else I want to talk the problem out,
but if my interlocutor resists,
and if my question’s answered with a shout,
a claim that I’m an act while anger twists
a face to hate, a jaw to rigid grind,
refusing to engage in any talk,
suffusing with confusion, I’m inclined
to laugh inside and take a little walk
away from tantrum and apart from murk,
unless/until you’re ready for some work.
I’m disinclined to watch performance live.
For years I’ve understood the cause to be
strong empathy: I want the act to thrive –
I wince at failure’s possibility.
(Then too, I never drew from any crowd
the energy I want. I suffer loud
invasions in a massive theater line,
a little anxious and about to whine.)
Perhaps I ought to look another way:
assume that the performers can admit
to imperfection when appropriate
at least as well as I do, when I play
my expertise in error. It’s in me
to trust they have their own resiliency.
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