As a lawyer I am heart broken nothing I learned will matter.
As the son of people who came here for a better life fleeing Dictators (from Russia in 1944 leaving their home in Lithuania) I owe it to them.
As the child of a Veteran who nearly died in Vietnam after surviving the Russians it’s my right.
As the father of a Son who says he loves everyone whom I want to grow up in a just society.
Hyperbole is now dead. This is the real deal they really are creating a dictator. Trump was grossly criminal and he will get away with it with everyone knowing it.
Pablo Neruda is perhaps the greatest Poet in any language in the 20th century. He wrote a poem once about his dismay with the politics of his time. I love his work and I think his dismay captures what is going to solidify after this happens.
It's not disrespectful. Flying the flag upside down is the traditional symbol of distress. It is respectful of the flag, and a powerful symbol of protest against a government that has gone against everything this flag, and this country represents
That is all.
Walking Around
BY PABLO NERUDA
It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie
houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.
The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse
sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.
It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.
Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.
I don’t want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.
I don’t want so much misery.
I don’t want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.
That’s why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the
night.
And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist
houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.
There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical
cords.
I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic
shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.