PROTEST POETRY
Repurposed
A prayer for an end to climate change — weather-wise and politically
I’m laughin’ at clouds so dark up above. Singing in the Rain/Arthur Freed
I didn’t want to, but I went for a walk.
Three steps in,
I was as drenched as Gene Kelly –
sticky with sweat, lips tasting of salt,
in no mood to sing, much less kick up my heels
in homage to high and mighty humidity’s
godawful graceless reign.
Irrefutable proof
that, now, more than ever,
climate change needs reining in
before its choke hold of shock and awe,
its criminalization of empathy,
its veneration of indecency
drown all hope.
Rounding a corner, I looked to the left
rather than the right…
And I saw a bed of succulents
whose names I can never recall
but whose planters — a child’s outgrown
rainboots, sneakers, and high tops –
I’ll revisit daily,
even if
they disappear in tomorrow’s
gathering storm
of black and white thinking.
A reminder to repurpose grief,
to keep those who prefer concrete
over roses guessing.
Shall we cultivate
goofiness, whimsy, joy?
Hell, yes. Yes.
©Jenine Bsharah Baines 2025
I began this poem last week — when the heat and humidity here in So California were damn near unbearable. Nevertheless, one afternoon, I braved the heat — hoping a walk would kickstart my creativity. Not a line I wrote was going anywhere.
I wish I could say a walk around the block decimated my writer’s block. It didn’t.
But I did see a ‘garden’ that entranced me. And eventually, after a long hard ghastly labor, this poem was born.
Of course it’s political — how can it not be? Those of us on the side of US democracy are sweating; the threats from the authoritarian Right keep raining and raining upon us, steaming like pools of sulfur in hell. Worse yet, those in the know keep warning us our political climate is going to get even more harrowing before it gets better.
I’m reading Churchill to comfort me. Also the words of Nathanael Greene, commander of the Southern Army, written in a letter to George Washington during the Revolutionary War:
“We fight get beat and fight again.”
And, yes, yes, yes, let’s sing in the rain despite the Reign…
Thank you, yet again, and team at Catharsis Chronicles, for the much-needed safe space to rant. (And grieve.) ( )
Thank you, as always, dearest readers, for your support. Love.
Jenine Jeni, Jen, J
Call me what you will, what feels right.
Proper names are poetry in the raw. W.H. Auden
Also feel free to check out my new prose Substack, A Septuagenarian Sings
