Walking In The Dark
The poem came my way yesterday. Life is long and arduous, all the more so for humans. Risk and suffering cannot be “structured out” as we Americans are accustomed to think. There is no manifest destiny. We are not on-a-mission-for-god. Just because you and I have a voice, because our system of transfer of power, our system of justice, etc. etc. — no one is exempt from the ravening of the irrational, from a rupture of the social contract. The poem says it best.
Vote Your Way to Hell
Chia-Lun Chang
It’s a long and arduous journey.
Starving with numbness.
Tired of mixing kindness and sabotage.
You can’t trust instinct.
After the election, you can’t believe the weather is wrong again.
The sky cheats on your speech.
The process is complicated and precarious.
Disappointed, there’s no word of a sad sneer.
Nothing has changed.
What else do you expect?
This is already a hell, paved by your blood and passion.
You’d rather go back to the womb, it’s warmer.
May other reckless souls be consumed.
Even so, I want everyone to vote.
Vote your way to an alternative hell.
Congratulations!
You’re part of the construction of our living inferno.
Here, keep cracking and burning bones as fuel.
The walls scream for mercy, sounding like your singing voice.
Many innocent young souls are recognized.
Vote! You deserve limbo, not war.
We need to keep walking in the dark, searching for hellfire and passing offspring an improbable spring and a maybe sunrise.
“This poem is based on two quotes: ‘I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it’ and ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions.’ I decided on straightforward language akin to running a campaign. It draws on the significance and fragility of our right to vote, as an act of protest in and of itself.”
—Chia-Lun Chang
Chia-Lun Chang is a Taiwanese poet based in Brooklyn. The author of Prescribee (Nightboat Books, 2022), her work has been supported by the Jerome Foundation, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Vermont Studio Center.
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