Extremes

Craziest time in virulent living when protest is black and white to erase invisibility when fueled rage overtakes urban pockets of beauty when the ash from smoking crater anger sears public spaces or an insurrection unachors reason Shifting focus from a virus, hot iron of deep confusion Pandemic cruelty to the unprotected masses Indelible marks of worry Frayed threads of crazy in trenches of stand off A nightly-news world reduced to sound bites Are we on the right side of change? A turnstile that thuds constraints and fury Hard scrabble life, a gnarly tale No sleeping bag comfort in living, oxygen thin with nothing left to conceal Hope sustained in the roulette wheel of history that breakdown is temporal that an impasse will give voice to the suffering that things strained heal Even the iron-cold ground boasts transformation. Poem revised: October 9, 2021