Song for an Aged and Declining System of Power

Desert mistletoe on a palo verde tree in southern Arizona.

Supremacy, we adored you

We lay our lives before you

How we wanted you

Age after age, we succumbed to you

let you entwine our heart and brains,

how we bought into you

Supremacy, you entangled us

like bittersweet you strangled us

like mistletoe you ate through us

Age after age, your parasites grew

took our value away from us—

No.  In our blindness, we let it go.

Supremacy, we begin to see

How thirsty and hungry you can be

and how little you care for me

Age after age, we move toward death

with your tentacles squeezing our chests

but we may be able to save the rest

Supremacy, we want to be freed

from the temptation to live in greed

and live off others, taking no heed

Age’d now, we’ve a few years left

to welcome neighbors beyond the West

to leave madness, to recover from theft

Supremacy, we adored you

We lay our lives before you

now your heyday is through

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

Gone Swimming

(Vintage 1930)

She slid into the book as if it were

a steaming whirlpool on a chilly day

Aahaah

or a cool pond on a very hot day

(She must revise as she is carried on).

The plot

kept her turning the pages and her head

kept time: slight left, slight right, then lift and turn.

Life-like,

fantastic—either would do, as long as

it wasn’t here and now—it wasn’t her life

unwrapped—

No, she liked travelling the only way

she could, page after page, day after day—

with the

library just ten blocks away. She used

her battered red wagon to carry her

books home

and back every Tuesday for fifty years

(or so), Tuesday the day it never closed

magic

this turn-around day, she reflected

and with a smile and sigh, she submerged.

For my prompt 

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Reading Fiction

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

Time Machine

source

The voting booth

is smaller than

a toilet stall.

Its light curtain

hides push buttons

and names that wait

to be chosen.

I face them now.

My hands pause

here between past

and future—not

hesitation

but reflection

on an act both

solitary

and social.

Such a small stark

altar to pray

at and preach from—

this voting booth—

essential but

insufficient

portal to the 

healing we need.

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

A Little Bit of Something

USA Banknotes
(Soon a Black woman's face will join this gallery.)

 

I held a dollar once upon a time.

I crunched the sturdy green and cream paper

into my pocket to examine later.

I touched it frequently hidden in there,

accordioned its texture and shape into

a wad that didn't crumple or tear.

Later, I smoothed it on my thigh, traced letters

and numbers, stern face, stiff eagle, broken

pyramid, leafy border and cream frame—

A simple piece of paper I could rip

into tiny pieces, or, whole, put

obediently into my piggy bank.

Dear sweet Wilbur*, shaken, rattled with coin.

A precious container of mystery

he'll make these little bits of nothing grow.

Then, one day, I will carry Wilbur out

into the world where he becomes Charlotte*

and gives and gives until her life is done.  

For my prompt Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Money 

(for World Savings/Thrift Day)

*Two characters from the children's book Charlotte's Web by E.B. White.

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

Who Are We?

UPDATED: "Governor Wolf, Commonwealth Response to Pittsburgh Shooting"  10/27/2018

 

Today a shooter murdered

11 people in Tree of Life

Or L’Simcha Congregation,

a synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA.

Daily, we die from hate

and guns and bombs. 

Daily, those spared clean up

and grieve and sigh and fall.

News casts changes in front lines of battle—today

a Temple, yesterday Mosques, Schools, Churches, Borders.

Hardest hit are people of color—citizens

and refugees—victims of hate, guns and despair.

In lieu of action, we

list names, verbs, places and

adjectives.  We open

our pockets and we march.

We pray.  We learn we will

die at prayer and leave

bloody libations in

our holiest places.

We don’t learn how to stop.  I ask the trees again

to help, to tell us what to do.  I have a few

on my patch of the planet—two pines, four maples

a lilac and a dogwood.  First learn our names, they said.

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast

Winter is Our Best Hope

Winter by Amrita Sher-Gil 

 Ah, winter!  Will it lay our discontent to rest?

Neither the growing season nor the harvest have

lived up to our expectations.  Not enough

rainfall or too much rain replaced balance—

so forest fires raged, crops grew skinny and scant,

and trusty maple leaves forsook their red and gold

for motley brown.  No one is laughing.  We want snow

to cover up the evidence.  We want driven

snow to be pure as its idiom, restful as

a night in the woods with no promises to keep.

We hope a winter’s sleep will renew our faith,

erase our errors and give us another chance

to thrive and meet the challenges of our time.

For Sumana's prompt:

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Winter

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2018 Susan L. Chast