My palms weigh heavy,
my fingers are aching
to write poetry with wings,
words that fly
into your eyes and make you think
that for a moment you see
some
thing,
even the tiniest thing,
a little more clearly.
My voice too
rattles the cages of my throat
longing
to sing to you.
This, though, will not be one of my finer entries,
only one I feel a need
to say,
rather than be silent
~ ~
The autumn closes on us all,
here in the Northern Domain
and the miserable misery of working
pulls on me like a ball
and chain --
I am not one of the unemployed in America,
nor am I one of the untaxed wealthy.
I am a member of the Working Class, which includes everyone
from garbage collectors to postal deliverers to teachers to engineers to insurance salesmen to nurses
to the retired to the grill-girl at McDonald's.
We are all the ones who pay the taxes and bills, with interest,
on every single living and dying step we take.
We're the ones who keep the company
woops, country
alive.
And now the ghoulish parade of hopeful GOP's
have donned their Halloween masks;
every day a new trick,
with promises of impossible treats.
Today, we discard our masks and return
to drudgery;
for them, the masquerade
has only just begun.
We're doomed to listen to them,
and to be required to believe
actually believe
that one of them,
just one of them,
is more capable than the current one man in office
of relieving us of the mess we're in,
and restoring us to 1960's prosperity.
No no no no No
On this day, 11/1/11,
I say to you:
no one single American citizen
can turn this mess around.
Only us,
together,
can turn it around.
And we must start by stopping
our bickering,
start by stopping
our partisanship
start by stopping
believing
that we're right
and the other person
is wrong.
Start by listening,
and looking
with both eyes wide open,
and we will see
the Statue of Liberty
sailing away to sea.
We're all right,
and we're all wrong.
We have
lived so well,
so long,
and now
our biggest challenge is
finding a new way to live
well
together --
