Another missive from poetry workshop.
American Pipe Dream
“Blow up your TV, throw away your paper
Go to the country, build you a home
Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches
Try and find Jesus on your own”
– John Prine, 1971As Steve Bannon tells us
They’re “flooding the zone with shit” –
Sowing the seeds of chaos,
Till we can’t keep up with it.Distracting the population
With outrageous tweets and lies
On continuous rotation
Like so many gnats and fliesDemanding our attention,
In hopes we fail to see
The destruction they are sowing
in our democracy.Eventually, we’ll tire –
It’s too much to comprehend.
So we go offline, turn off the news
And pray it soon will end.“Life’s too short”, we say, “to spend my days
In anger and in fear
I’m exhausted in so many ways
I’m just gonna’ leave it here.”You’re right to think you can’t go on
Without a break – so take it
It’s a relay, not a marathon
Together we can make it.Be sure to come back when you can
We need you in this fight
We may not have a perfect plan
But we know what’s wrong from right.– Margaret Polaneczky, 2/26/25