Sometimes when I get mad,
when I get really mad,
sometimes I write a poem…

Rosa Zubizarreta
3 min readOct 25, 2024

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One of our presidential candidates,
recently made a promise…

Vote for me,” he said,
“Vote for me, and you will never have to vote again.”

Nah, not mad at him…
I believe that he means what he says.
Don’t like him,
not voting for him,
and yet,

what I’m really hearing is,
there’s a whole lotta folks,
so disillusioned with voting,
that this promise might actually sound good to them.

Nah, not mad at them, either…
I get it, or think I do…

The people we elect, mess up…
we feel betrayed. Not good…

NAFTA was a fuck-up,
Scaramucci now admits.

Many of us protested against it,
but it happened anyway…

People lost their jobs,
communities lost their factories,
we have not recovered from this yet,

And so some folks,
ready to burn it all down.
Ready to burn down our shared home…

I don’t agree. But still,
I kinda get it…

Hard to trust people
when they don’t admit they make mistakes.

***

“Democracy Needs the Loser”,
said the headline of a recent article in the MSM
trying to explain how the system works,
the rule of law…

OUCH!!! No one likes being
“the loser”,
especially folks who done already lost a LOT…

So some of us may be tempted
to vote for the guy
who can’t stand to lose,
who doesn’t like “losers”,
who calls wounded soldiers losers,
and who admires dictators.

HEY — regardless of what I think of that guy,
me, I don’t like a system
based on winners and losers,
EITHER…

I want a world
where we can come together
hear our differences,
find those places
where we can agree…

Some of us know this can work,
but maybe you gotta live it,
to believe it…

Meanwhile,
“Democracy may not exist,
but we’ll miss it when it’s gone…”
Astra Taylor reminds us

what we take for granted,
always thinking it’s not good enough,
and then one day, it’s gone…

**

So yes, I want better, too…

Coz as Langston Hughes wrote
In “Let America be America Again”
America never was,
America to me…

Yet we are the ones,
who made America the land it has become,
the land that never has been yet,
and yet, must be…

America the dream

of freedom

and justice

and respect

for all…

Voting only the first step
we are not going back,
we are going forward
though if we walk
a spiral path
sometimes it looks
like we are going back…

We have never been,
and yet we are
figuring out how to be

a multiracial
republican
democracy…

Or not.

We wouldn’t be the first
democratic republic
to elect a dictator…

It happens.
Maybe we’ve not learned that lesson yet?

Still, we each doing what we can
to figure things out
learning how
to share life together

during whatever time we’ve got…

I know some folks thinking of Mars,
and dreaming up machines that make it
so some people
can live forever,
their brain inside a computer…

yet many of us here wanting
to figure out, how this green Earth
can keep being a good home

for our kids,
and for their kids, too…

**

“divide and conquer”
the oldest con game around
and very few of us here,
the 1%…

if we the 99% can figure out
how to work out our own differences,
we got it made…

We can set a bountiful table for all,
& invite the super-rich to join us,
sliding-scale fee of course! :-)

or go do their own thing on Mars,
their choice…

***

So, who am I mad at??

No one, not right now,
at any rate…

Guess I just needed
to get all this off my chest
do my own small bit,
for what I believe in,

stop worrying so much about what others
are saying or doing,
& if it’s helpful or not,

and just get clear
on what I want to bring

to the potluck feast
on the other side
of all these troubles….

See you there…
or not.

You always have a choice,
and you are always welcome…

“For great as the powers of destruction may be,
greater still are the powers of healing.”

the road i am walking on… photograph by author

rosalegría
Potsdam, Germany
two weeks before the 2024 U.S. elections
and yes i voted…

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Rosa Zubizarreta

Deepening democracy through participatory leadership, empathic group facilitation, and co-intelligent design. Learn more about my work at www.DiaPraxis.net.