by suze allen
Fell into a saturnine ravine
yesterday afternoon
picked up a paper and fell off the wagon
Read a little
Just a finger or 3
A sniff, a swirl, a tiny taste
A slug of miasma
A shot of brume
Tried to stop there
But you know
one headline leads to another
And next thing you know
you’re consuming whole articles
media blitzes
breaking news always breaking
And you can’t stop
Even though
your gut lurches
you’ve got the vertigo
And you cannot find your balance
Or your words or your bearings
and you forget where you left your compass
the keys to your sanity
the purse of your wellbeing
And the story story story
spins itself into itself
into itself until it is the only story
And everything is bad and wrong and doomed
So you cook – extravagantly
eat a big plated dinner
altogether too much chocolate afterwards
watch reruns of Law & Order SVU
because you love true crime
it’s not a crime
then take to the bed
sick and tired of being sick and tired
you get a little hair of the dog
late night comics
levity news
to calm your nerves
just a fatigue chaser of fear not
they can’t possibly
he’ll never then
a night cap of the resistance – vive la
and you lie awake stone
cold sober
try to read your book,
which fortunately or unfortunately is Apeirogon
about an Israeli and a Palestinian
who lost their daughters to war
but they become friends
and that is comforting
and you fall asleep
REM dreams – busy but illusive
something needs fixing in rambling houses
where people known and unknown are in trouble
it is up to you
to solve the mystery, the problem – save the day
them you everyone
And you wake up hungover
from the relapse
of your news addiction
and you vow to start over
one day at a time
say the Serenity Prayer
though you are not a praying woman
but rather because Reinhold Niebuhr wrote it
in his stand against Nazi antisemitism
and US neutrality in World War II
what you write is this poem
and plan your resistance