Recorded Reading (3:49): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/zt9mrhrvwhszck2r1pzm9/Full-Play.m4a?rlkey=7snw6fofx97de3u6k500jcn79&dl=0
*****
Of her three requests when she went “on strike,” the poet has achieved a compromised two.
Plus one which she never expected ~ and for which she is very grateful.
She asked to be able to sleep, and ~ both after and before being maliciously awakened a half dozen times just at the point of slumber ~ that she has done, nearly every night for the past two weeks.
She asked to work without constantly having to restart her device, and ~ with a very few very notable and very outrageous exceptions (proving her concerns not at all unfounded) ~ this, also, she has been able to do.
And she has, as well, something that, if you had told her just yesterday afternoon would be hers, she would have thought it impossible.
Considerate drivers. Going by the van. A whole city full of them!
All of yesterday evening. All of this morning. And all of this afternoon.
Exceptions to the change were so extremely rare as to be truly negligible.
The poet’s stalker still hovers within a mile of her, night and day. Still creates hatred for her in every new group of people he can get to. Still releases toxins and parasites into her van at night, still has operators creating digestive disturbances and other health draining hazards with compromised products and services.
In her extensive prior knowledge of him, also, it must be said that situations of any sort of balance or harmony are entirely antithetical to this predator’s nature, and that he will immediately move to eliminate the circumstances which allow the poet enough inner energy to read and publish poems for her readers here once again.
If you ask this poet, in any case, we are all, so to speak, holding our breaths. Making last minute spiritual adjustments in our souls’ trajectories.
Time seems to her short, before some of the changes which we have been discussing in theory on this site are, in fact, upon us, in whatever form we may each individually experience them.
But ~ at this moment ~ maybe not tonight, or tomorrow, maybe not next week or month or year, but right here now…
The poet has what she needs to go back to work.
How ’bout a sonnet?
*****
Full Play
What is this absence dreadful worry of,
This calm amidst the howling of life’s storm?
Is this that for which I so earnest strove?
Decide we to civility conform?
Upon our paths toward the dawning Light
Do we, not yet reach out in genuine
Unselfish kindness, but this much get right —
Remember others’ happiness begin?
Perhaps this one is resting, that one sad
Or might have happiness to celebrate —
Same energy we used when we were mad
Begin mutual benefits create
Last it for years, or but this happy day
I give relief and gladness their full play
*****
*****
This poet is physically disabled.
Public housing being insufficient to her medical and creative needs, in order to continue working she is presently living in her minivan, publishing all of her works using one thumb on the touch screen of her smartphone and surviving at a fraction of her nation’s poverty level.
If her work has touched you, she would treasure any contribution you might be good enough to offer ~ http://www.UgiftABLE.com ● #72D-31S.
Please be aware that it takes several days for her to be notified of patronage. Thank you for caring.
*****





Leave a comment