I find myself wavering between wanting to sleep all the time and not being able to sleep at all since last Tuesday's election. Yes, I'm still processing feelings of impending doom and anger and sadness and disappointment.
I'm not going to play nice because I'm worried about alienating some disciple of this blog. I'm done playing nice. When the Felon in Chief was elected in 2016, I told myself it was because his supporters had no idea what a major fuckup he was. This time, his supporters know exactly who they've elected, and they're celebrating, which makes them either the dumbest people on the planet or racist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic cultists. Either way, I'm not going to hold back anymore. As Forrest Gump once said, "Stupid is and stupid does."
The only thing that's given me solace in the past seven days is writing poetry and decorating for Christmas.
Billy Collins writes some poetry . . .
Poetry Workshop Held in a
Former Cigar Factory in Key West
by: Billy Collins
After our final class, when we disbanded
as the cigar rollers here had disbanded decades ago,
getting up from their benches for the last time
as the man who read to them during their shift
closed his book without marking the page where he left off,
I complimented myself on my restraint.
For never in that sunny white building
did I draw an analogy between cigar-making and poetry.
Not even after I had studied the display case
containing the bladed chaveta, the ring gauge,
and the hand guillotine with its measuring rule
did I suggest that the cigar might be a model for the poem.
Nor did I ever cite the exemplary industry
of those anonymous rollers and cutters—
the best producing 300 cigars in a day
compared to 3 flawless poems in a lifetime if you’re lucky–
who worked the broad leaves of tobacco
into cylinders ready to be held lightly in the hand.
Not once did I imply that tightly rolling an intuition
into a perfectly shaped, handmade thing.
might encourage a reader to remove the brightly colored
encircling band and slip it over her finger
and take the poet as her spouse in a sudden puff of smoke.
No, I kept all of that to myself, until now.
I led a virtual poetry workshop last night. The theme I chose was "hope," because I think everyone needs it at the moment. Several of my best poet friends showed up to write with me. It was a good time, an inoculation against the darkness.
Here is one of the poems I wrote yesterday:
come decorate with me.
by: Martin Achatz
after Lucille Clifton
come decorate with me
this November night, open
boxes, unspool colored lights--
red and green and blue
and gold and purple
and pink--because there is
room for every color on my
tree this and every year,
dust off ornaments inherited
from mothers, made by kids
in kindergarten--construction
paper hands that will wave
welcome and love all December--
unknot garland, maybe
the tinseled green kind with red
holly, because Romans gave
holly as Saturnalia offerings,
and at the end of the night,
we will sit in the glow,
count ourselves as light, too,
because nothing, nothing
can dim us.
Saint Marty's moment of hope tonight: my Christmas tree, glowing in the corner of my dark living room.
❤️
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