American Hurricane

Unlucky mortals! O deplorable earth!

All humanity huddled in fear!

The endless subject of useless pain!

Come philosophers who cry, “All is well,”

And contemplate the ruins of this world.

--Voltaire

Poem on the Lisbon Disaster

Or an Inquiry into the Axiom, "All is Well"

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nobody knows how we all got into the room

not exactly, not really

but we’ve all got theories

turning behind our eyes in insidious whorls

like so many ants having lost direction

marching solely by scent

toward some dark and agitated center

so dense and intoxicating and inescapable

that we've either forgotten that where we’re supposed to be going

could not possibly be there

or worse yet

no longer care to find it

only to defiantly declare it found, this place

in which we were always meant to die

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all of us now here whirling in a conference room

in a holding pattern before a pedestal

pocked with branded microphones

moored here by maelstroms started

by tempestuous philosophies

dreamed or designed by soothsayers in climates long ago

when we didn’t know better than to see shapes in the clouds

and take it as a promise that it was all for us

and not for them

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we are ever-renewing refugees of the storms started inside of us

and we’re sick and we’re tired and we’re hungry and we ache

but more than any rations, any fresh water, any reason to stay

we need rescue

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we need someone to come into this room right now

with the right clothes and the right podium

someone from the right places with the right things to say

that knows about microphones and their seriousness

and how to use them

someone who can tell us

about storms like we remember them

to assure us that it’s over and that it was worth it

someone to tell us what the hell we weathered this storm for

and just what it all means anyway

because we’ve been waiting for so long

and so many people keep dying while we wait—

man cannot live on “wait” alone

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what will they say

whoever is really back there

finally, when they realize

the festooned ante-room they’ve been holed up in

for as long as they can remember

has no backdoor

how embarrassed they’ll surely be

when they realize they’ve kept us waiting

how sorry they’ll be

and begin to sweat a little when they admit

they didn’t have time to prepare any remarks back there

it may look nice to us but it is suffocating

and that the tumult of storms is the nature of the thing

that it is all so complex

that our suffering was necessary

and has been so beautiful to watch

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and will they tremble at all

when the day finally comes

when the moment is forced to its crisis

when the only way out of the room

is through the storms

started by warm waters dribbling from their mouths

and the inciting winds of their speech

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when they finally realize

the storm has reached their shores?

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Comments:

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/9w1a69/sonnet_to_the_war_to_end_all_wars/e9hjt2x

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https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/9w42e1/the_unspoken/e9hixrr