Dēmos, The People (poem)

sensitive souls hold the true power!

a cat Buddha in the full-lotus position holding a little Buddha statue

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The headlines continue to make my heart feel heavy, and any moment of happiness I experience feels like a betrayal in a sense. How can I find any smidgen of joy in world pummeled by quickening climate change and societal collapse? If only I was exaggerating even a tiny bit... But I know that if I bar myself from hope, from childlike wonder, from life's little joys... I'm not doing anyone any favors. If I suffer more, it won't alleviate the suffering of others. If I suffer more to the point of total dissociation and burnout, I'm not helping anyone at all! So I will grieve, I will question this very existence and I will also feel overwhelming gratitude for the love in my life, I will enjoy a heaping mug of chamomile tea while listening to classical music. I will write poems until I can write no more! I will be a sensitive soul until my dying breath. I will choose solidarity over divisiveness any day. If that hardly makes a difference at all, so be it. I refuse to devolve into a husk that only knows fear around every corner! To say I'm utterly fearless would be an outright lie, though. I'm terrified, but I'm equally hopeful somehow...

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In a world growing louder by the day,

I'd stitch these two hands to these two ears,

but I need them to write

about the promising pocket universes that can still be found

between climate collapse,

late-stage capitalism,

dictator regimes

amongst shrilling screams

and decimated dreams...

Oh, the privilege I carry to even say such things—

that I, heart heavier than my body,

can find a moment to smile

at the sunbeams that still find their way

through the thick gray to land on

a zen master in feline form,

find a moment to belly-laugh

with the nothingness between breaths,

find a moment to think about Everything while sipping slightly sweetened sencha tea.

And those moments do mean something,

even though there's inconsolable suffering,

even when hatred and greed

have declared themselves fit kings.

But this isn't a monarchy!

It's meant to be a true democracy,

from two Greek words:

dēmos, the people

and kratos, rule.

We hold the power!

I have yet to learn how to fully

step into that power as a human

without guilt clinging to bone like sinew.

How dare I laugh and love and live

when innocent folks and flora and fauna

are barred from basic rights?

How dare I fight with these poetic lines?

But that's how unfit kings win;

they get you to question the very things that make you human.

They demand fanatical fear and self-doubt

to take place of what they fear most:

an unshakable sense of sensitivity & solidarity seamed together in symphonic coherence.