The following prose poem is a free-write based on two inspirations: Dana’ Guthrie Martin’s echolalia post, and Michelle Obama’s campaign speech today in Ohio. I was listening to Michelle’s inspiring speech on CNN today while folding clothes. As she began a number of sentences with “we feel it when,” I thought of echolalia, and the conversation on Read Write Poem.
We Feel It
“It’s causing us to be in survival mode.”
From Michelle Obama’s campaign speech, Friday, October 24, 2008, as she referred to the global economy.
We feel it when we say goodbye to a son who is traveling far away, or when the line is disconnected while talking to a friend.
We feel it when a door won’t unlock, no matter how much we jiggle the knob, when our dreams turn to ash, when art turns to dust, when someone laughs at our efforts to reach into the airwaves to pluck a thread of inspiration from the ether. When we hear angels tapping their lotus petal feet on a distant island; when we hear the bellows of beasts in the dank basement of our soul.
We feel it when we deny ourselves the right to enter glowing orbs of goodness or empty cupboards of despair.
We feel it when we are told our time is past, we are creaking bones and gray hair with a one-way ticket to a walkabout leading to an incinerator.
We feel it when a man is unjustly accused, when lies do go on forever.
We feel it when the horizon’s flat line becomes the universe, supported on the backs of the emperor’s sycophants, who will forever love the new clothes.
Balanced On the Edge 
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