King Clot

I awoke a year ago
to our country suffering a stroke;
a narcissistic clot broke through,
hemorrhaging our life blood
throughout the landscape
of our national heart and mind
without regard for what it destroyed:
immigrants, races, genders, healthcare,
the environment, the elderly, the vulnerable,
and worst of all, mutual trust.

No matter what its blood stained,
the clot sucked up joy while stirring up fears,
exposing cruelties, setting fire to promises,
polluting Earth, lying for applause,
destroying what others died to save,
all in the mistaken belief
it would become King Clot one day
by conquering all it could rupture itself upon.

Which hemisphere did it immobilize
for this outcome of division?
Left or right? Extreme or center?
Male or female? CEO or farmer?
Nuclear war or peace treaty? Anger or kindness?
Confusion or clarity? Both or neither?

So here I lie as the blood edges nearer,
one single human among the masses,
wanting to run away but without the means,
wanting to deny but unable to conceal myself
from the thick, red invasion of insanity.
For I must make a choice,
my own choice of whom to serve,
a choice of direction to separate or unify,
to forgive or expand the fracture,
to risk an honest exchange or refuse to listen.

So I travel deep within myself,
deep into an unknown I recognize,
a light ever brighter as I approach
some universal existence
that birthed me and never left.
It holds an answer if I but relay
the questions the clot has unleashed:
How will you help bring into being
a new era for Earth and all upon it?
How will you help create the future
from the chaos I have brought
to loosen you from your past?

And so I repeated the clot’s questions to existence
and did choose this sacred reply:
I will identify and embody one treasured value
from its infinite source
and through my true self express it
across the desecrated purpose of our humanity.
In so doing, I will participate with others
to weave together new patterns of a new era
in a design of values we create
to evolve where no King Clot can survive.