To SRW

(As I age, those I liked, ran with, respected, loved, felt responsible for start falling by the wayside throughout the decades and, eventually, die, evoking memories, sadness, and reflection. It turns out that retaining or maintaining relationships based on memory is impossible. The same is true of retaining and maintaining bad memories for the sake of reference merely keeps us from progressing. Because I am political, most of my relationships were enhanced by the politics of wherever we found ourselves. The following is one example of a relationship I had at one time in my life.)

To SRW.
I know, it didn't end well. It couldn't have ever ended any other way.
In a way, we could say it didn't even start well,
You pretty fresh from your marriage,
And me still married,
Later, you apologizing to my ex-wife when your consciousness was being raised, and mine was being erased.
But still, even when the worst of times encircle the best of times, I think we changed each other, for better and worse,
Like the war in Vietnam,
The war between the sexes,
The war between black and right.
You died in June of the year of the 2025 plan, two years after the end of roe vs wade, over eighteen months of genocide in Gaza,
I wonder how you saw all that, maybe it was easy, because you might have believed history was on your side, or better, the truth, that men have done all this, with only the women behind the scenes with their rigor and mortis.
I would agree.
And that's where we were then, right in the heart of it all, the fight for our lives.
I often go by the parking lot where the grand house you rented from the church stood, remembering we'd sit out there on the porch, taking in the cool delta breeze on warm summer evenings, we agreed on so much, except maybe where my place was going to be in the new feminist world.
Meals down at the Tea Cup Cafe, still there on 21st.
Me showing up late one night stoned on acid and talked all night long. I don't remember about what.
You'd drive down to Stinson and leave in tears, an hour and a half on the road. I'd hitchhike to Sacramento, we tried to piece it back together, love/hating our way to the new woman, revised man.
Then you were in love with R***, maybe other women, maybe bisexual was the way of the future.
But you were jealous of the red headed woman, and the other women that I went to, like I was jealous of her and your women friends, you all had so much to do and be.
We all thought we were going somewhere, driven by some sort of "progressive" ambition. We dug up history, uncovered nearly all of America's lies and deceits, exposed it to the light but we never built anything nor improved true democracy and equality. Modern times has brought us closer to the destruction of any progressive legacy we may have engendered and our individual successes are not the example of historical success. America is as close to a totalitarian state as it ever has been. This is a nation in which complete and total devisiveness is more reflective of a sociopathic disorder rather than a nation built upon principles of democracy and freedom. It is a nation of individual and national sociopathic personalities. Truelly, a case of moral compass dysfunction.
And what did we uncover? Well, it seems despite the massive exposure of all of America's and the world's tendencies toward unequal, oppressive, economic, imperial, settler focused, and military dominance and totalitarian directed philosophies, our generation started off with the nuclear bomb and is ending with the nuclear bomb and every time we came close to breaking through, armies, courts, militias, economies, dictators, assassins, sociopaths, weak politicians, all contributed us going nowhere or going backward.
And the politicians we debated over, voted for McGovern, Carter, Shirley Chisholm, Eldridge Cleaver, Clinton, Al Gore, Obama, Biden and many others, all turned out to be abstractions and distractions. Where are any of those (living) heroes now? Not a one willing to sacrifice their career nor reputation to lead, or simply cry out for what they must surely see is the decimation of everything they said they believed in.

Over the years I've written several poems/prose about that time and have since, declared History as the nostalgic remembrance of the disappointment of what is thought the Future was going to be.  When it was us being spied upon, arrested, murdered, protesting, we got an end to a war, roe vs wade, civil rights bill, relaxed marijuana laws, and now, it's others who are being spied upon, arrested, murdered, protesting, and the death of roe vs wade, more war than ever before, less equality/justice, more killer drugs/addictions, and a failing democracy/rising totalitarianism. And thats what is called "Making America Great Again."



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