Stick to Poetry and Art!
A lady in my neighborhood
screams at me, when I rain fury
on the New Regime. He’s your President!
Get Used to it! Stick to Poetry and Art!
It would please me to stick to poetry and art.
Perhaps the screaming lady has a point.
Perhaps she’s read John Keats:
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,— that is all ye need to know
Sadly, it’s just not true.
We are not mere figures etched upon an urn,
but living creatures watching beauty burn.
*
Donna Hilbert’s latest book is Enormous Blue Umbrella, Moon Tide Press, 2025. Work has appeared in journals and broadcasts including Eclectica, Gyroscope, Rattle, Sheila Na Gig, ONE ART, Cholla Needles, TSPoetry, VerseDaily, Vox Populi, The Writer’s Almanac, anthologies including Boomer Girls, The Widows’ Handbook, The Poetry of Presence I & II, The Path to Kindness, The Wonder of Small Things, Love Is For All Of Us, What the House Knows, Poetry Goes The Movies. She writes and leads workshops from her home base in Long Beach, California.
So true. We cannot stand by and do nothing, say nothing, as our country turns to ashes.
Absolutely true, Donna. Thank you!
Bravo! Thanks, Donna, for so succinctly stating what feels like the aesthetic quandary for many, I am sure. And thanks One Art for bringing this to my inbox this morning!
Powerful! Thank you, Donna.
Oof, that last couplet…so sadly perfect. Sadly so perfect? Watching with you.
Oof, that last couplet. So true, sadly. Sadly true. Watching with you, trying to put out small fires.
A perfect capsule of the zeitgeist. This is what poetry is meant to do.
So true! We must do as much as we can to push back against this regime!