Antidote for a Familiar Discontent

I call what follows a “found” poem – not because I found it already composed on a shred of newsprint or on a billboard, but because I discovered it in the unrest of an early morning. When I find myself wandering the house at 3 AM with a familiar discontent, and there are no answers because the questions have not yet revealed themselves, relief is in Purgatory where I have paper and pencils and a laptop computer that is aging faster than I am.
Outside Purgatory’s window, the sun will most likely show up for work at least once more since it got this job keeping planet Earth alive millennia ago. As I write, the sky is blue and transparent rather than thick and black as it was earlier, and I wonder how many times I have watched it happen through the years – sunlight illuminating the creation of new day.


Found at 3 AM

I hope this blog won’t be a rant (def: to speak extravagantly or violently; talk wildly; rave).
I’m in the creation phase (it’s 3 AM, couldn’t sleep, you know),
Christmas carols on the CD player with no manger in sight
(too much Christmas in Christmas, I’m told),
and even the cats have left Purgatory where I write
so it’s just me and this laptop, both of us showing our age.
Outside the sky is black as octopus ink while I’m
in my head for threads of an idea
but all I get is worry
so black and thick I can’t see anything
except worry words that float like the answers in those old Crazy Eight fortune balls
we took to school: Will Mary marry Harry?
Words come to the triangle window and you read “yes” and everyone giggles
or you read “no” and everyone giggles.
I’d like an Eight Ball
to find words that float around the worry. Then we can giggle, too.

What’s wrong?
Oh, my word, here’s the list and its just one. I can see it in the inky night right now
but in the morning there’ll be another, I promise, which isn’t what I want . . .
A promise, you know, that someone is listening. . .
About healthcare and war and money and unemployment and stupid, greedy people who think
7 figures is better than wisdom and sell us down tubes of despair.

The authority gods,
mouths and faces on LED TVs,
yap and yip, a pack of coyotes
who got their prey and are reckless,
throw bones and scatter what is left
so next day’s treading feet do not hallow ground.

I want to yell STOP but outside
the night is so thick no one listens, not even
the sweet singers on the CD player who are
harmonizing about Christmas and gifts and jolly things,
and there is a sparky violin playing and those singers
who know how to carry a tune.