Listen to a reading by Tim Foley:
Weep, sisters, for the child with the blown-out skull,
for the other child burned alive,
for the limp, lifeless, tiny bodies
and the piles of unrecognizable carnage.
Weep, brothers, for the cackling politicians,
for the apathetic westoids,
for the human drones chanting “We love Joe”
and the DNC attendees covering their ears
to avoid hearing the names of murdered children in Gaza.
Weep for this fraud-faced civilization,
this microplastics civilization,
this OnlyFans civilization,
this Moloch civilization Ginsberg wrote about in Howl,
this civilization with enormous forced grins
over plates full of shredded children
in selfies with AOC and Tim Walz.
Weep with careless abandon.
Weep til the sobbing wrings you out like a sponge.
Weep with head back, screaming sloppy and snot-nosed,
ribcage splayed open to the heavens
and human heart beating unguarded and unhidden.
There are no answers in the weeping.
There are no solutions in the tears.
There is only the release of something that needs release,
and an act of sacred solidarity,
and an act of unauthorized humanity,
and the small, private victory
of having gone one more breath
without being assimilated
by the machine.
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Featured image via Pixabay.
Then . . . dry your eyes and sing. Bellow. Roar, Thunder, Growl, Rasp. Howl. Screech Every anti-war anthem you know at the top of your voice From Give Peace a Chance to Down by the Riverside to Blowin' in the Wind to A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall to I Ain't Marching Anymore. And so on. Sing first to yourself for courage. Then find one of your neoliberal friends --- Democrap or MAGA zombie, it doesn't matter -- and sing it to them loudly. Instead of insulting their naivete, try the route of music soothing the savage beast that must necessarily be present inside them for them to support such horrors, tacitly or actively. At least make them initiate a dialog, ask why you're suddenly serenading them with old songs.
This is so powerful. I hope you don't mind, I'll be trying to fit this into an audio experiment this weekend. I have a concept and we'll see where it goes. Thank you for this, we weep, but we are together on our sanity against this insanity.