It's All Bad - March 10 2025

 

It’s All Bad

March 10 2025

It’s all bad.

The news weighs on me

and I’d love to be free of it.

To stop reading and railing

and feeling overwhelmed,

stop longing

for some imagined retreat

when nothing’s stopping me.

As if I could withdraw from the world

when there’s nowhere else to go.

As if wilful ignorance

could make what’s happening stop.

Because like it or not

the world goes on.

But still

after all the futile shouting

and hammering on the wall

surrender feels so sweet;

just putting a stop

to all this tiresome talk

about the awfulness,

the change I want,

my mounting despair.

Except from the fear that soon we will all

have barred the door and pulled the shades,

will have mastered

the art of distraction

and absented ourselves from the noise.

As if anything would change.

As if we aren’t already held hostage

by the extremists and ideologues,

the small reckless men

who connive to run the world.

Fortunately, the idealists persist

in their quixotic quest;

the activists

still acting out,

dissidents

still standing their ground.

Who make me ashamed

I’ve let this helplessness

exhaust my confidence

and sap my will,

watching from my easy chair

as the world turns

and chaos reigns.

Ashamed,

I’ve fallen back on faith

that all will end as well

as it’s always done before;

or at least so far.

How we somehow survived

the bottle-necks and calamities

of human history,

the two-steps-forward-one-step-back

of our brief paragraph

in the monumental story

of life on earth.

Ashamed

I’ve sought comfort instead of sacrifice,

taken the path of least resistance

instead of turning to push back.

Ashamed

that all I have is this poem.

Which may have helped clear my head

but will likely have no effect,

or, truth be told, even be read.

A self-indulgence.

A miracle cure

for helplessness.

The false hope

that the pen can vanquish the sword,

words

subvert the evil overloads.

Who are secure

in their yachts and fortresses

and palatial chateaus,

peering down from the parapets

with self-satisfied smirks;

merely amused

by the foolish attempts

of the rabble rousers

and earnest activists,

the half-hearted hoi-polloi.