i keep pondering early in this
panini
when i wrote and wrote
pages upon pages
freehand
freeverse
free of other older morning page expectations
and i wondered what the world would be like
‘post’
pandemic…
and i felt it,
at the very core of my being
that we’d
‘go back to normal’
before it was really,
truly,
clear
to do so,
and that the ‘normal’
we were heading back towards
had the potential to change,
to be a ‘normal’ benefitting more people
than the normal
benefitting a very
very
very
tiny
percentage,
but i felt it,
that it wouldn’t change
we “couldn’t” change
we wouldn’t change.

and lo and behold
all my strife
from mid-march 2020
to april, may, june, july 2020
most of that has come to fruition:
we aren’t ready,
people are still catching
ventilizing
dying
and half the population is still
pretending
this virus
doesn’t exist.
and of course
we’re going
‘back to the grind’
as if that’s a good thing,
as if it’s strength
or a moral righteousness
that gets you through
(rather than random genetics
and generational privileges
and a system set up to benefit
the few)
and as if
this ‘grind’
is our entire culture
(i mean, at this point, it is,
but that doesn’t make it
good
or right)

and i wish i had something better to say
than ‘i saw this coming’
i mean, i’m sure folks more versed in
infectious disease
and sociology
and economy
and the ‘why’s’ of all this
also saw this coming…
i guess i just wish
i’d had more time
to live in a world of hope
than i actually got.