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Christopher

Noxon

Available Art

Strange sick summer

As this strange summer stretches on
And sickness spreads
And tempers and cities flare
I wake with a jolt and think:
All that matters now
is the election.
Nothing else matters. Nothing.

Not work.
Not diet or exercise or sleep.
Not IG or TikTok or FB or TV or the GDP.
Not my drawings.
Not my grief
(which is here for good and not going anywhere - ever. That much I’ve learned, 213 days out from unfathomable loss: there’s no getting Over It).

It’s the worst of times
And the only hope of recovery is in
the election of actual adults with empathy and expertise:
Biden and Bubser and Gascon and Gideon and Kelly,
Adults who’ll work to repair the incalculable damage
Of the last three - no, hell: 244 years.

We need to win.
And not even because we need the victory
But because (oh here’s the real truth):
They need to lose
(all of them, the ring-kissing enablers the cynical cheaters the sleazy conspirators and the whole stinking shitpile of them, but but really, mostly, you know: HIM)

And I sit in that for a while
Savoring the image of Mitch and Kellyanne and Ted and Don getting
Ushered out and kicked in the asses and handcuffed,
dragged by their collars,
sputtering, red-faced, pathetic,
exiled, expunged, humiliated.

And then I stop and think:
Hoo boy maybe time to slow down the doom scrolling.
Maybe it’s not so bad.
Maybe this isn’t actually the end-all be-all, good-versus-evil, boss-battle showdown.
Politics is a game, a sport, a fiction.
It has always been thus.
The worst of times? Try 1969 or 1939 or 1913 or 1865 or 1616.
This current crop of goons didn’t invent fascist flim flammery.
Andrew Jackson Joseph McCarthy George Wallace
Could teach these dumb-dumbs a thing or two.

And then I’m stopped short again, thinking: 
How bout I quit it with the name calling.
Goons, dumb-dumbs, lumbering dumptster barges, the ass menagerie - ha ha ha.
Yes they do the same and worse, yes they’re awful & yes it’s infuriating
But stop and see
See how retribution and revenge and oppression feed on one another
See how tit follows tat
See how when this election is done
There will another and another with progress and backlash and so on (unless democracy is done and the world is actually ending and these really are endtimes O God)
But really now:
See how malevolence and loss and humiliation is a never-ending fire that’s fueled & whipped up
By news cycles and powers that be

So yes donate and draw and protest and phonebank and wax poetic
Yes stand with the black bandana’d agitators kicking back tear gas canisters
Yes link arms with woke kids and POCs and old hippies and grizzled vets and horrified moderates and women in yellow T-shirts.

And all the while remember dear departed Saint Lewis, the Boy from Troy, the man in the white trenchcoat on the bridge in Selma
(who marched in the footsteps of Ghandi and CT Viviian and Ella Baker and Dr. King)
Who didn’t give in to hate or despair or hopelessness
Who absorbed the blows of opporessers and looked them in the eye and said, over and over:
Love
Love
Love