Speechless

an annotated poem by C.A. Matthews

 

Speechless.

I can’t explain the mixed emotions that I feel whenever I read the headlines on my social media feeds. Speechless, because what can I say or do to stop the killing, the bombing, the senseless hurting of others that the US government does and allows to be done to children, to paramedics, to doctors, to students and teachers, to journalists, to hard-working blue-collar individuals and farmers because they can and will personally profit from it?

Anger.

I feel this emotion the most because no matter how hard I—and others we like me—scream and fight back we cannot stop them. Anger, because we are but ants to be trodden upon in the billionaires’ quest for global dominance and Malthusian fantasies of replacing the 99% with AI and robots, things that can’t talk back about the injustice of their slavery and would nuke us in a heat beat if allowed to. Anger, because we will suffer and shoulder the blame for our country’s evil deeds while those who actively commit them will walk away scot-free.

Horror.

The sheer revulsion I feel at the sight of an 18 month-old baby’s cigarette burned legs, tortured by Israeli terrorists in order to force a false confession from his father. Horror, at how an Israeli academic can blithely say that murdering children in front of their parents is a good thing because obviously an advanced degree equates to possessing zero empathy for those you see as less than human. Horror that these psychopaths walk among us unhindered, promoted ever higher for their displays of cruel genius.

 

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An Anthem For Our Times

by C. A. Matthews

I wanted to do something different this week just to see where it would take me.

Last week’s post was on the longer side, and fact-heavy articles tend not to get re-posted as much. So I decided this time ‘round to share some more of my poetry, but this time by putting it to a tune. (Maybe this kind of audio post will help me break into the Substack Top 100? I’d be happy just to get my subscriber count over 2,000, including a few more paying subscribers.)

I won’t claim to be a poet. I’ve had some of my poetry published before, such as last year’s poem Dust From Gaza in For All, the Revolutionary Poets Brigade anthology. I know a lot more talented poets here on Substack (such as Dan Denton) who make my attempts at poetry pale by comparison. But I was inspired by two recent events to write this poem, which quickly became the lyrics to a song, an actual honest-to-goodness protest song.

I thought: “Every generation has a protest song, a song that sums up what’s really important and needs to change to make the world a better place. Why can’t I write that song?”

I know that sounds a bit arrogant, but one can always dream of being remembered for more than just writing a weekly sociopolitical column for the past ten years and pissing off more strangers, friends, and acquaintances than there are grains of sand on the beach in Gaza. I’d like it if people could say at my passing: “Wow, she cared enough to put herself out there and write a pro-Palestine protest song that made even more people hate her.”

The inspiration for my song came from Caitlin Johnstone’s brilliant in-your-face essay, Nobody Say “Fuck Israel, Free Palestine” which was in turn inspired by the Northern Irish hip-hop group Kneecap’s brilliant in-your-face protest screen at the recent Coachella music festival. Caitlin and Tim (they’re a writing team, so I don’t want to leave either of them out) stated that one should never say the phrase “Fuck Israel, Free Palestine,” as this could be considered hurtful by those folks who think “genocide is good.”

Well, let me state for the record that I’m certainly not one of those immoral, sadistic, sick and twisted bastards who thinks “genocide is good.”

 

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The Fight

 The Fight

by C.A. Matthews

 

Nowadays there are so many things coming at us all at once—climate disasters, political disasters, personal disasters—that it sometimes becomes so overwhelming that all you want to do is shout, “ENOUGH ALREADY! LEAVE ME ALONE!”

Only once you’re free from the stress will you be able to walk away from everything with your fingers in your ears and your eyes closed as you curl up with your favorite blanket in a corner of your bed like you did when you were three years old and then forget that the world even exists.

Too bad the world never forgets about you.

The world has a way of finding us no matter how much we try to hide from it, like it or not. It won’t leave us alone if we have half a brain cell or even a tiny gram of integrity. It will call to us and plead with us to take part in its happenings. It will call to us saying, “Help me get rid it of these evil and immoral elements and replace them with just and moral ones.”

And we’ll feel obligated to do so, until it all becomes too much for us again. Then we’ll curl up in a fetal position and sob, “Enough! Please?”

I’ve been hovering over the “Enough!” cliff edge for quite some time now, so I really appreciated reading Caitlin Johnstone’s latest poem. Here it is in case you haven’t read it yet...

 

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