Gunshots echo again
as we huddle on the floor
hoping the street battle
will be over soon
before bullets penetrate
the walls of our apartment
in public housing.
Almost every night now
shooting starts after dark
so we don’t dare go outside
at risk of getting shot,
except for emergencies.
If my children get sick
and need a doctor,
no matter how dangerous
the trip to the hospital
I have to do it for them
because ambulances
don’t come here anymore.
The big storm finally came
and blew out the power.
The streets are impassable.
I’m stuck in my apartment
without electricity
so I can’t charge my phone,
my laptop, my kindle.
I don’t know anyone
in this building of strangers,
so I can’t visit someone
to pass the time away.
I’m going out of my mind
because there’s nothing to do
and I can’t help worrying
what will happen to me
if the power doesn’t come back.
I see the tarnished city
streets overflowing
with legions of the lost,
homeless veterans
yearning for their uniforms,
illegal immigrants
hope ignited at the Rio Grande,
extinguished at the detention center,
the mentally ill, the criminals,
the endless victims of poverty
circumspectly ignored
by citizens of abundance
subtracted from humanity,
guilty of the primal sin
abandonment of the children.
All these horrors parade
before my scavenged eyes,
then I turn a corner,
walk past a neglected park,
halted by a flash of orange
a Monarch butterfly,
a visitor of beauty,
a feast for my famished soul,
a momentary fantasy
of pollenating away
the pestilential ugliness
that pollutes the urb.
I lived with my husband
for six pain-filled years
of constant abuse,
verbal and physical,
until I divorced him.
Then he started death threats.
First were unsigned letters,
words cut from magazines
promising torture.
Next were obscene phone calls
vowing he would kill me.
I went to the police,
talked to a detective,
showed him all the letters,
described all the phone calls,
but all he could suggest,
an order of protection
that he said wouldn’t do much good,
which left me only one choice
to get a pistol
and learn to use it.
The inexorable plan
of the corporate magnates
to gentrify the cities
continues relentlessly,
lower income residents
forced out of their apartments
by inordinate rent hikes,
until all they can afford
are outer borough buildings
far removed from former jobs,
so travel is too costly
for them to go to work,
leaving urban centers
as the playground for the rich,
labor imported daily,
not allowed to live there.
The glaciers are melting.
The seas are rising.
Storms get bigger,
far more destructive.
Wild fires get wilder,
drought across the land,
natural disasters
increasing daily,
but the powers that be
will cease to profit
if we take urgent steps
to avert climate change,
preferring the collapse
of our environment,
rather than give up
exercising power,
wallowing in comforts.
American railroads
once the only sure way
to cross the country,
have been mostly replaced
by impatient passengers
with airline travel.
But railroad owners
are making record profits
hauling vital freight
that keeps the nation going,
yet they will not fairly share
the money that enriches them
with railroad employees
who get almost no sick time
while giving their best
to demanding jobs.
Though most unions in our land
have lost power to the bosses
if the railroad workers strike
they will paralyze the nation
still struggling with inflation,
as well as other burdens
in a time of division.
When I was young
I could not foresee
how I’d end my days,
barely conscious
in a hospital bed,
in a nursing home
for the indigent,
staffed by the indifferent
of minimal service
to the ebbing lives
consigned to their care.
I can still cognate
sometimes when I’m clear,
but looking backwards
cannot determine
what I should have done
for a better ending.
It’s midterm Election Day
and unlike years ago
when people did not know
who they would vote for
until the last minute
when they reached the polls
today we are certain,
the country so polarized
most of us are decided
not always for good reasons,
some full of anger and hate
spewing ugly theories
of evil conspiracies
plotting to enslave them,
encouraged by a few
who want to end democracy,
replace it with autocracy,
so they can tell us what to do
then compel us to obey
either with illegal laws,
or unjustified arrests,
urgent to shatter the idea
of a free society.
Winter will be coming soon.
We lack fuel for power, heat
and our leaders are away
on luxurious vacations,
or going through the motions
of pretending to govern.
We don’t know how to get help
as our suffering gets worse.
When freezing weather arrives
many of us will perish,
especially the aging,
while righteous politicians
continue their promises
of aid in our time of need.