By Rachel M
Toiling to survive and a long day of labor deadens the best parts of We.
Are there instructions? A guide map?
How do we document the end of an empire nourished by blood, built on brazen exploitation… the thought of writing with sincerity only elicits fatigue
Fatigue that reverberates, penetrating far into the joints
Threatening finger bones–snap–shatter
Weaving words an old solace, now too vulnerable, too sensual, and real.
Creativity–matching language to meaning–now a chore?
What more can be recorded? These are the wastelands. This is the end times,
when exclamations of, “In this economy?!” don’t cover the half of it.
The Knight of Infinite Resignation has failed… Fear & Trembling batters rotted beams
Loaded by greed well past capacity, the tower groans and gives warning
Of the inevitably – gravity or breeze – the tower crumbling down
falling,
falling
as the structure of capitalism lurches & sways, ground shifting beneath your feet
Next vertigo
Then dissociation
Your cloak of protection is to scoff and call it Sound & Fury
Try to pretend, temporarily while you can
close your eyes
Easier to invalidate, gaslight the Self
saying, “Things will go on as before! We’ll have our reward.”
“Eyes down. Chin up!”
“You’ll surely win the prize…”
“Work for retirement.”
“a weekend of rest”
Working to exchange the fruits of a life’s labor
Lost – stripped away
To be sold back for the small price of a soul?
No!
National leaders say it will be different
It will be different if you just donate to this campaign
And wait
For the next election cycle ushers in a new figurehead to save us from the lowest of lows
a promise, broken before it’s said. The ballad of a politician.
Capitalism leaves two options
Delusion or despair?
Fabricating the false dichotomy to crush the many
Down
Down
Down
Under its weight
But your deepest being remembers.
the Home of community calls us to a better path
Not hope
But the knowledge, the certainty, that there is no other way
Than to carve out our purpose, meaning, to brave a life worth living,
Mutual care, love, solidarity is the socialist’s choice tonic
Providing the tenacity to trudge through, knowing
To suffer is to endure
To grieve is to live
To despair in the dark is to be human
So we gather and share, we muster a cry
It’s time to write again
to conjure the words to harness the collective experience
It’s time to be honest, live truthfully
It’s time to check on comrades and dearest of friends
Exist as much as we can while we can