ALL POETS ARE THIEVES!!!

In the past few weeks, several friends and family members have either lost their jobs, had their hours or salaries curtailed, or had little luck finding a job at all...In a downtown Newark Chase Manhattan branch, I read the receipts left curled by the ATMs. The balances are $18.12, $76.43, $22.30, $38.89...My graduating seniors are gripped with apprehension about what the future, their future, might yield except difficulty and deficits...Psychic distress, even depression, is general in the body politic...Faltering, Faltering, Failing, Falling...present-tense plunge into catastrophe, malaise, and maelstrom. We need a healing song to purge the atmosphere, to remedy the rotten refrain we have been forced to lisp against our better selves. Any suggestions from the world archive? Any picture to paste? Poem to recite? How art reacts to calamity is a test of our humanity and I do hope you are up to the task.

Either that or else it's happy hour time and I've got the Molotov cocktails! J/C