New poem by TCBH! resident poet Gary Lindorff: 'One day, in the asylum'

We were having a bad day in the asylum,

A bad 8 years, a bad sixteen years,

Oh, heck, a bad era,

Well, let’s face it, a bad history.

But we had a good leader for a change,

A guy from Vermont

With wild white hair,

An honest man

Who most people liked and trusted

Who openly talked about revolution.

We were all hurting,

Waiting for a sign.

Time was rushing by.

Days, weeks, months.

We were all serving life-sentences

Without parole,

That is, living in America.

Me in Vermont, you in Pennsylvania,

My good friend Tim in California. . .

And the feeling was ominous and ubiquitous.

Like a Stephen King novel.

There were distant mountains

Crumbling silently,

Occasionally a forest would fall down.

Bees were going extinct.

Japanese children were eating Minke whales in school.

The government was busily making tiny atom bombs.

But who knew what was real anyway?

Some of us had turned to prayer

And were insisting that it was time

To ask the stars

To come closer

And tell us what they saw.

We were tired of trying to run the world

From the insane asylum,

So very, very tired.

(Asylum? Some called it a prison,

Some a way of life.

Some called it home.)

 What would happen next?

We kept hoping,

Looking up from our i-phones,

Staring at the sky with medicated eyes.

And then?

It was just another Friday

Like any other day,

Heading in to another presidential election cycle,

In the asylum.

It happened at a Bernie rally in Portland.

A sparrow* flew in...

For the rest of this new poem by GARY LINDORFF, resident poet at ThisCantBeHappening!, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/3106