We're bombing Iran now

and trying to live

There’s tension now nearly all the time between trying to live and simultaneously be a citizen of a country that is hell bent and determined to burn everything down, to kill children, to bomb other countries, to take down fishermen who might be drug runners but maybe not, to protect pedophiles, to bomb more countries, to listen to, align itself with and supply arms and bombs to yet another country whose far-right citizenry cries victim and acts with impunity, razes an entire land and murders tens of thousands of people, primarily children yet fully intent on building up the land to make it another playground for the rich the land of milk and honey and now wreaks havoc in other parts of the globe, the Orwellian admonition that War Makes Peace, all with no end in sight, stoked by the Christian nationalists who find camaraderie with the Zionists and some kind of warped expectation of Armageddon, so why not — burn it all down? The head of the Department of War the man who might as well be a sausage stuffed into a suit believes, too, that Jesus is coming, and he’s coming to a particular bit of land in the middle of the great big world, but he — Jesus — is also everywhere, all at once, even in the mouth of a young white man running for office in Texas and we’re supposed to like him, to think that he’s “the good Christian.” I’m done with these people. The men the Christians, the Jews the Muslims the Democrats the Republicans the billionaires the pedophiles the people who support all of the above. The patriarchy. I’m done, I guess, with America with #terribleAmerica #dumbAmerica #violentAmerica #vapidAmerica #rottentothecoreAmerica. Yet, I am supposed to try to live. To be grateful that I’m on the other side of the bombs, that I don’t live in one of those countries whose leaders throw homosexuals from buildings, who make their women cover every inch of their bodies who walk behind their men who say they are modest but who are, actually, bloodthirsty. To look for joy. To not be a downer to family and friends who are as intent on living despite because what else are they supposed to do? I guess I’m a socialist or a Marxist or a crazy leftist a peacenik an iconoclast. We do what we can. We live in a country where we’re told to take care of our families. I’m looking at the moon right now, high in the sky and shining fierce through the winter branches of trees into my dining room where Sophie’s breathing treatment vapor drifts around the room the constant buzzing of machines the in and out of the saints who help us help her to live. I sat at a bar this evening with my son and one of his friends. I ordered a margarita, a crispy shrimp taco and a crispy fish taco. The bartender wore a shirt that said Make Tacos Not War. We looked through the window of the bar and watched a man pull his beat-up truck to the side of Melrose, a pick-up that was piled high with mattresses, so high that they were shifting and tipping and the man was adjusting the mattresses, pulling ropes and pushing those things and it looked so precarious but he must have figured it out because eventually he got back in the truck and pulled out into traffic.