I have recently had document losses because my computer quit and needed to be rebooted. Unfortunately, it seems, only what was stored in icloud was recovered, which wasn’t much. Luckily, many of my files were on the Desktop, which was recovered. It’s all a mystery to me. But here is a poem from 2017 that was surprisingly saved. Not difficult to imagine what prompted this poem. It is here, unrevised, a draft apparently. Should it be revised, the first thing to go would be the title, or at least it should read FEAR SOME.
Fearsome
1.
Fear of not knowing is a chilling
fear, a cold war fear, green walls,
bowed heads, the fear
baby boomers might have experienced;
I wanted suicide pills in my pocket, just in case
I didn’t want survival. Fear of what:
a nuclear weapon, a bomb? No bomb
shelter. I was clueless. I wasn’t fit
to be a living martyr.
But, that was then, pre-Kennedy. I was
eleven or twelve, without words. Intellect
was government food on the table, cradled
by child support and a fearless, single
mother.
2.
2017, fear is hot, fear an inferno.
Fear deeper than a sixth grade girl,
green walls, a cold war.
THIS fear is smart fear. Aware.
Listens. Questions. What is
An Executive Order? Grand
Standing, a stance set in brick
walls? Walls do eventually
crumble or get knocked down.
I like my walls to be fences,
fences to be metaphor, satire,
and cost nothing—but wisdom.
Free words rumbling
and tumbling wild.
This fear knows too much. It weighs
heavy with take aways and prophet
demands.
3.
I have known prophets. Who hasn’t believed
they were Jesus? I was a flower child, more
child than prophet, more disciple than deity.
Some of us deserve empathy. Call it
maturation.
Some say mentally unstable,
deranged. Don’t be fooled.
One has to be worthy
of psychiatric labeling as excuse or definition.
Evil. Out of control narcissist. Evil.
I’ve seen it before, but never this pronounced.
4.
Greed is unbelievable and unbecoming. Greed will be
Undone. I call for a bell bottom revival, tie
dye shirts, and love-ins. “The Mystical Magical Tour”
and the “White Rabbit.”
Reefer is everywhere, we’ve got the weed. At least,
until another Executive Order.
“Mystical Magical Tour,” Lennon–McCartney, 1967, 8 December 1967
“White Rabbit,” Grace Wing Slick (Jefferson Airplane)
©Sherry Quan Lee
January 26, 2017
