(It is 1:45 AM ~ but the poet hasn’t been maliciously awakened in a helpless fury tonight, as she conjectured in her last post she might be, after all.

No ~ tonight, so far, she hasn’t been allowed to sleep at all.

Her targeter particularly loves to sound his transceivers near and toss his pebbles at the van while the security guard is actually elsewhere on the lot itself, knowing the sound of the car engine drowns it out.

He’s right outside in person ~ clickety-clacking gleefully ~ as the poet writes these words.

Gosh, she’d love to be writing about rainbows, instead of about her ongoing total agog amazement that this is allowed to go on for years ~ day after day, night after night, right out in public ~ and never be stopped.

This, in many ways, is not the nation the poet was raised in. Not the one of which, in school, she was taught to be proud.

There are quite a lot of us saying that right now.

If she were left ~ after years of this kind of treatment ~ any reasonable hope of recreating a more reasonable situation in life, she’d finish this train of thought for her readers as she usually does ~ with something encouraging, like, “Working together, we can bring that nation back.”

But she hasn’t been left a reasonable hope ~ has she? ~ of even having one night’s normal sleep ever again in her life.

She hears from new enemies ~ with whom she’s never even interacted, so whom she cannot have personally harmed ~ recruited into active harassment ~ by the half dozens and dozens ~ every day.

Her targeter particularly lives to corrupt places in which she’s been held in some respect and treated well in the past.

Like this shop.

He loves to see her heart broken.

And broken. And broken again.

Along with her body, which never gets a normal night’s rest, much less the kind of rest appropriate to aging semi-invalidcy.

When we think about such persecution of innocence; such smooth talking yet maniacally dedicated evildoing; such provincial approval of citizenry and sheeplike participation of those who cannot know both sides of the story; such an absence of enforcement of laws and protections which would so instantly brought into play for the moneyed but are apparently quite nonexistent for the poor ~ we think about the England of Dicken’s nineteenth century.

But ~ as long as it’s taken the poet to come to it, and as very much as she hates to say it ~ we should be thinking about twenty first century America, too.

So: Tonight we serve up what’s on order.

Bitter, frustrated, pain-ridden, despairing poetry it is, then…)

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Recorded Reading (4:03): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/qyv5kuo7m9s49lg2p36wg/For-the-Ladies.wav?rlkey=xm0hkkwjdkucws27j038puciu&dl=0

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For the “Ladies”

Purse those lips any tighter 
And the suction
Will cross your eyes

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This poet is physically disabled. Public housing being insufficient to her medical and creative needs, she is presently living, in order to continue working, in her minivan, publishing all of her works using one thumb on the touch screen of her smartphone, surviving at an income of a fraction of her nation’s poverty level. She would treasure any donation you might care to offer ~ http://www.UgiftABLE.com ● #72D-31S.

Please be aware that it takes several days for the poet to be notified of contributions. International patrons please contact the poet via email or post a comment for the necessary numbers.

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