How to Be Useful in Strident Times
By Vickie Jarvimaki
Sitting at the kitchen table
I stroke the keys smooth
over and over and wait
for words to bring meaning
to a blank page. It feels frivolous,
this poem making
when such a cruel era
as this one is squashing the life
out of free expression, out of us. Yet
Voices Under Pressure
claim that now is
precisely the time
to make a poem
and keep making poems
and songs and books
and movies and
comedy, for Christ’s sake!
We have seen Darkness melt
in the heat of laughter,
felt the imperative to shine light
on everyone’s pain,
yes, Everyone’s pain,
for pain is a sturdy house
that refuses no one,
unifying those otherwise disunited
who dwell there. It is time
to be fierce in determination,
relentless with truth
as inspired men, yes, men,
did with their pens and parchment
at the painful, bloody birth
of America when the heart and soul of
this land was impassioned
to fight injustice, fight
for an ideal, an Idea: freedom
of self-determination.
The Call has arisen,
like the snake on a flag,
to transform our screens
and stream our poems and books
and movies. Make people laugh. Shout
the truth, for when truth rushes out
of our mouths with the force
of a gale, or whispers in a susurrus
through our neighborhoods,
ignoring it dishonors
legions of ordinary people who have
paid and are paying
with “the full measure of devotion”
for the birth, raising up, and preservation of
this universal ideal.
Stand up.
Be free.
Write on.