by Tricia Knoll
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“CPAC speech transcript aka Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before” by Jesse Duquette |
We talk about now as if ominous shadows smear our thinking toward inevitable end times. Balance the probabilities of the asteroid coming too close with betting on the Super Bowl coverage of who will get more time on the camera: the girlfriend or the President. Trying to understand the ferocious truth of half-time rapper lyrics while dancers recombine the colors of the American flag to taunt a black Uncle Sam. Race. Religion. War. Lies. Impossible alliances. Obsequious sort-of-leaders speak mumbly words. Babies starve inside aid tents flapping in the wind until the tents disappear. No one is sure where their food is tied up on a dock. We look askance at neighborly birds and ask if we are expected to laugh at a man who would be king. A poet says this is when we sing the dark songs. Few people, not enough for a loud chorus, seem to have learned the words. There are so many dark songs. Another says this is the time to rise. Maybe it is, but the planes are crashing. And I am snow blind.
Poet Tricia Knoll has four-foot icicles hanging from the eaves of her house in Vermont. She shatters them with shovels as panacea for the angst of these days. She had measles as a child and knows it is no joke. Links to her nine books and dozens of published poems some of which are songs to the dark times at https://triciaknoll.com
