It overtakes your shoulders, pulls you into the center like a twinkle-spin-out-disappearing blackhole. Alone, walking on the beach. Unable to love, unable to stand life. Start out young; the heart is what really ages, as it grows stiff–cynical, beaten, unwilling to shake off the scar tissue and try again–it turns the rest of you to dust, like a plant on dried out ground.
Or is that just pouty talk?
Hey now, don’t you know it?
Hey now, can’t you feel it?
A young man turning old.
And the band plays on.
Why won’t you grow up?
Knives that fall onto the lawn.
I feel like a failure walking through cotton candy.
Never mind.
Clinton’s email fiasco that may or may not turn into a criminal charge. And the arrogance and lack of judgement that the incident demonstrates.
Sander’s longshot campaign, his lack of foreign policy experience, and does he understand how dangerous terrorism has become? A handful of crazy people could nuke a city, or poison its water, or a mall’s ventilation system–or do that to several cities at once. Or they could blow up the House while most everyone in the Federal government is present (suggested solution: most people can send representatives while watching it on TV in someplace dignified–for example, their state’s capitol). Can he handle this? Privacy is important but so is keeping New York City from evaporating (actually, any city dweller with any imagination will notice that evaporation is about the best option for dying in a terrorist strike).
Trump’s insane ideas: building walls across Mexico that the Mexican government will pay for; stopping all Muslims from entering the country; using his magical bartering abilities to turn the world’s governments into rival businesses that he strong-arms and outmaneuvers. And then also the usual (for a couple generations anyway) bank-breaking Republican fiscal policies that make the poor get poorer, the rich get richer, the government unable to fund necessary services (D+ on our last infrastructure report) and the economy stay unstable. Oh and then there’s the narcissism, flagrant misogyny, and general Nietzschian conception of “might-makes-right or at least it wins and winning’s the thing”. Except that doesn’t even win: when you reduce all to power plays, you are the ones that become Nazi Germany, and someone else must give the King’s Speech and say that might doesn’t make right, that there is more to life than power and money, and that government’s are responsible to those human values first: to creating and maintaining places where people can be both physically OK and morally decent. That is the vision that allows for the mutual trust and support necessary for collective success!
So what can be done?
Because Elizabeth Warren isn’t running and so I’m thinking we won’t unite: we’ll all stay alone in this giant, ill-conceived, incoherent mosaic.
What can be done?
Why would it have been different with Elizabeth Warren running? Because she can explain the necessity of financial regulations, the compatibility of healthy capitalism and taxation and even some redistribution. She can explain that ad-money linked to a candidate’s ear is corrupting our democracy, and she can help us think through our way back to the steering wheel–or at least the brakes: in a representative democracy the primary responsibility of the electorate is to serve as a final check against excessive corruptions and flagrant madnesses of the political class, a duty we’ve largely traded-in for teatime with pundits and rabble-rousers where we pretend we’re all political geniuses and/or that the other side’s too perverted to talk to.
What is different about Elizabeth Warren? Well, she’s not hated by the right like Clinton is, and she lacks Clinton’s email problem. The left acts like it’s the Republicans fault that Clinton is hated: that’s somewhat true, they’ve spent 30 years maligning the Clintons. But is the point here who’s fault it is? And isn’t the email mess more than just Republican headhunting? Wasn’t that at best really stupid? The nation desperately needs someone who can unite us, and it is hard to see how that person could be a Clinton, and easy to see how it could be that sunny, sweet, irresistible, and so very accurate without being pretentious or impractical Elizabeth Warren, who, I regret to say, is not running for President.
Bernie Sanders still is running for president, but he’s excessive: we could make college an affordable part of life without mandating that it be free; we could improve the health care reforms we’ve started without demanding that we jump straight to single-payer; we could regulate the financial sector without acting like they’re all a bunch of crooks; we could move slowly but surely towards a better society–and cranky perfectionism is not the way to do that.
The Republican party is hopeless because their budget ideas are all based on fanatical magicalism, and they flip constantly between hating and trying to dismantle government and pretending they want to and can govern–and even keep social security going. Donald Trump is an arrogant fool with no experience governing and even supposing he is a good businessman and not more like a good self-promoter and con-man, the country is not a business–it is a country, and the bottom-line is not the annual profit report: it is justice, freedom, liberty, safety, and the tools and space for everyone here to become their best so that we as a nation can become our best: yes, staying safe and financially healthy, but most fundamentally becoming kinder, more just, wiser, more fun, more creative, more human–living out our inner landscapes more completely: that is the path to sustainable collective success, and anything else is the Titanic.
What can be done? What has gone wrong? Why can’t we even unite around no-brainers like stopping banks from using publicly-insured money to fund risky investments, taking back the political process from the “ad money + lobbyists = you listen to me” political investors, and improving our D+ infrastructure? Look–the sickness is most pronounced in the Republican party because they’ve given themselves most completely over to the myth that money is the point and justifies everything else. It is that ugly truth that makes bipartisanship tricky. The Democrats are not perfect, but the Republicans have lost their minds. And yet this exact same position in reverse is held by the majority of Republicans. How can I see with their mind/hearts enough to find a common ground? It is painful for me to try. I am so baffled by them. And yet no progress will come to the land that now slouches with flat heavy feet down the rocky ravine–just asking for the decisive tumble into the abyss–unless we can find a common reality.
AMW and BW, worried on of a Sunday morn in the year 2016.
I’d give up, but that seems futile.
I’m getting older without a cause. That’s the problem.
If Elizabeth Warren would’ve run for president, all would be well. I could relax while she unified the nation around sensibleness. But that didn’t happen.
But I don’t really understand what is going on. Why are the Republicans so crazy? Why won’t they stop running for office if they hate government so much? Why won’t they admit that we need to build roads and that people on welfare is not what is breaking the budget and that of those the small percent that are gaming the system really are not what is breaking the budget? Why do they keep pretending that cutting taxes is a magical potion? Why have they trapped us all here in this hog pen while they whistle and rodeo us in the mud–pretending that we’re raging bulls and not puny brown-nosed piglets? I am so lonely here! And the weirdest part is that we all know that we need some mixture of free market, regulations, and safety net. We all know that the magical formulas that toss away any one of those is magical thinking. So how can it be that we let the Republicans act like two of those three economic pillars are evil treacheries and the other is God’s mighty hand in creation? And so we are scattered to the wind. Oh Israel! Oh Israel!
When we be a people? When will we share this land and this purpose? Don’t we have a purpose? Don’t we agree at least that the government should avoid making decisions just to appease people and organizations with money to burn? Why are people voting for Trump? What is going on? Will someone please get me out of this dank cellar?! Who locked the door? Who’s flooding the upstairs bathroom? Don’t they know I’m trapped down here? Don’t they care?
I can’t stop the evil. I can’t even figure out what is behind it, where it is, what it is. I feel helpless and stupid. What do I do? Who do I turn to?
AMW and BW, all upset with no place to go
Sigh no more, monster, sigh no more,
we’ve lodged the turning pike;
through horny skull and with twisting gore
Into a dark dropped psyche.
Then sigh not so,
but let it go,
as in your jagged jawing
your victims changed their sounds of woe
into shhh I surely go.
Flail your tentacles no more
at man and beast and fairy;
But make your way to nature’s shore,
where monsters shed their scaly
fiercesome monster hides.
Then sigh not so,
But let this go,
And be you cool and empty,
forgetting all these sounds of woe
with a shhh I surely go.
AMW / BW
Shakespeare’s “Sigh no more, Ladies” from “Much Ado About Nothing”
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever;
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.
Then sigh not so,
But let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey nonny, nonny.
Sing no more ditties, sing no mo
Of dumps so dull and heavy;
The fraud of men was ever so,
Since summer first was leavy.
Then sigh not so,
But let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey nonny, nonny.
I cannot bear the things I’ born.
I will not share the worlds I’ shorn
Of all their giddy shining charms
while lopping off long suckered arms.
Those monsters of deep dark sea
that circle ships and prey on we
rugged sailors with open shirts
salt spray eyes and laughoff hearts.
Ladies men hero men shipped from afar
who lean on rails with windsplit hair
and tumble to the bars
To tell our tales and drink our ales
to toast the king toast his land
and toast the creatures hand
that almost did but couldn’t quite
choke us till the blackest night
filled our minds and took our souls
to wherever silence flows.
AMW / BW
She’s been giving me jaw,
saying why don’t you marry
someone
Getting old age
ain’t helping your looks
and there’s no one
to call your own.
Swing me back around,
you know the way
to my heart,
a sneaky tickle
where the monsters
start
too cold and much
too lean.
I’m bad and you’re
you’re the worst
one yet.
Who will save you now?
Who will push you back up
now that the smash
has settled and the dust
floats so still and calm
about to drift down
to the sagey seafloor.
I can’t do this alone.
And other silly refrains
you toss off to show
you’ve got a spot
and you’re staying strong
and expanding well.
AMW / BW
He came along
in a cowboy hat
and a boyful grin,
swaying a little clunky
on Solid Gold
cause it was never
really his scene.
Looking a little distant
on album covers
in flight jackets
with cigarettes
that laugh along
with the changing times.
Another one come
and gone
another one
about the wheel
within the clay
and that
James Dean
wasn’t really
James Dean
that is what he means to say.
Some kind of love,
and can you hear
me whoever you are,
you are the nation
and you will go on.
Putting together the pieces,
building up a life,
spinning a life,
telling a life,
changing well,
getting wider
deeper
in the light.
A friend
because he spoke kindly
and fully
within the shapes
you could correspond to
and hear out.
BW /AMW
Heading home
where I come from
where I can go
when I’m lonely.
Rowing the swoop
prow rowboats
out to the
rustling shipside
Going home
to find my time
and hold my friend
within the bounds
of the common stand
I’ll blast my carriage
and loose my wheels
to find someway
back
BW / AMW
Think about it,
there must be a higher love.
All along it watches and turns,
twisting the reeds
flipping the leaves.
Must be a realer light
taking us beyond these
our edges that keep
the bottles shut up tight.
Must be a deeper way
where our feet will fall
just right.
BW / AMW