Maelstrom, a poem about NOW

Maelstrom


What in hell has crawled through

the strands of DNA to snarl through

the weeds of time? To steal the welfare

of people going about their business,

not expecting disaster to strike, at

least not from within their own houses

and their own nations. How have

ignorant buffoons managed to overcome

every attempt by educated, thoughtful

people to stymie efforts to wreck lawful

society, to wreck venerable institutions

that keep humans—those who would misbehave

at any rate—from killing off the rest of us?

Where will this end? Am I too old to live

through it? Do I want to? Do I want to live

if the last fifth of my life is no more than

a struggle to eat for another day, to have a

roof for another day, not to be invaded in my

own home by gilet jaunes, the crass army

of deluded, delusional and just plain dumb

ne'er-do-wells unleashed by the greedy upper

crust, by the arrogant Rees-Moggs, by the

simpering Goves, the jerks like Johnson

and the terminally bereft and vile, the morons

without portfolio like Theresa May?

What can I do that I have not done? I have protested

verbally and with money. I have written. I

have—of course—worried myself sick. For me, of

course. But for all those younger or sicker or

in any way less prepared to deal with the maelstrom

that's coming, less prepared than I, and I am

totally unprepared. How could I be? I grew up

in a post-War world where things, generally

speaking, got better and better, with only a few

small backsteps and missteps, easily rectified,

and off we went again. Forward in technology,

in medicine, in art, in international relations,

in democracy, in kindness.

And then, all of a sudden, there was Brexit.

All of a sudden, there was Trump.
Where did these despoilers of human life, of

human progress, of human kindness...

WHERE did these monsters—yes, monsters all--

Trump, May, Farage, and godknows Putin--

monsters with human skin, some with human hair

(not Trump; by his cranial rug shalt thou know him)

come from? What manner of DNA damage,

and where from,

produced this crop of beings set to ruin the world,

set to unleash the worst human tendencies, the

ones we have been trying to overcome for many

thousands of years? The Old Testament rule of vengeance,

suddenly front and center, and carried out by the

least possible humans to be found on this planet,

or any.

I despair. But yet, I awake another day. I cannot

let my beloved husband, my dear dog, face the descent into

hell alone. I'm not sure I'm any help to them, distraught

as I am. But at least they know I love them. For what

it's worth. Worth more would be this: If I were an assassin

and did not care for my own life. Then...then...then

I could do something positive for humanity. I'd just

have to choose the target wisely, for there would be

no second chance, no way to remove a second horrific

stain from the cloak of humanity.

I'm a good shot with a basketball, even with a

Baretta. But not, unfortunately, with a rifle capable

of sending a bullet true for half a mile or more. No.

I haven't the nerve, even if I had the skill. So

I cannot do that. Nor can I spend all of every day

in prayer like so many Tibetan monks or Roman Catholic

cloistered nuns. A lot of good they've done, anyway.

I can close my mind to the horrors for a couple of hours a day,

finally. But not for all of it. Before the moon rises, I will

have suffered the tortures of the damned, in my heart and mind

at least. Sometimes, with the misery to come for all of us

preying on my soul, I suffer physically as my body reacts to yet

another needless shot of adrenalin, cortisol flooding my body,

releasing the fight or flight response, rushing through my veins

to damage what the coming starvation might miss.

I'm too old for this. We are all too old for this. The world is

too old for this. I wonder if its time has come.

Copyright 2019, Laura Harrison McBride

Sensei

Around the first of the new year, I will have a new book of poems out. They reflect the times, times when the political situations in the English-speaking world have seen rates of depression soaring and bank accounts collapsing, along--in so many cases--with hope.

This poem, however, has within it the seed of hope that transcends generations, I think. I hope so. 

Jimmy Donlon as a teenager, 1960s.

Sensei

It had been forty years or more
since I had seen Jimmy. Since
I was a pre-teen, he a wild
youth of 20 or so. Now,
he lay dying, in a hospital
two hours from my home.

His brother asked me to
drive him there. We all went,
my brother, too, and Jimmy's two
sisters. The five of us crowded
into the semi-private room.
Lord knows what the visitors
of the other dying man thought
of the Irish pub we
created, laughing and teasing
as we always had. Lord knows.

We took turns sitting in the
single chair next to the bed.
I shrank back, knowing my
turn would come, hoping that
it wouldn't. Could I do this?

Finally, Maureen got up and I
had no place else to go. I
gritted my teeth and sat.
"Hold my hand, please," Jimmy
said, and I died. I had to do this.

I held the talented, calloused hands of
a painter of walls--murals, faux
marbre and other old/modern
ways with walls.

A house painter, that's all Jimmy
was.

That's what Jimmy was.

A
good painter, a skilled one. Maybe
a great one. His assistant called him
sensei.

He died a few days later, before
we could come back on another
Saturday and liven up the world
of the dying with our antics, carried
over from childhood, depended
upon to take us through the good, the bad
and the in-between. It's what we
Irish do; we greet everything with humour,
before the tears and after.

Jimmy's sons' friends filled a church
for his service. A bitter wind chilled his
aged father at the grave site. A blast of
Irish humour filtered through three Irish
generations that filled the restaurant
after. The same old jokes, laughed at
over and over and over again. Known
even by his son who lived in Hong Kong.

But I, I had got more out of Jimmy's death
than the welcome reminder of a vibrant
family, targeting happiness even in grief.

I had held his hand. He gave me peace,
then, to go on. Did he know the fears I
suffered, the terror of gripping the last
living moments of a man I had known so
long ago, when we both were young? Yes,
I think he did. I think he held my hand not
for him but for me.

That's who he was, that house painter.
Sensei.

Copyright 2018, Laura Harrison McBride