I love reading fiction, often for escape. Cozy fantasy, like TJ Klune or Travis Baldree. I don’t love reading grim fiction, or non-fiction, and don’t do a whole lot of it, but sometimes I’m motivated by wanting to understand the world better. Last year, for instance, I read Too Much and Never Enough : How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man by Mary L. Trump. I’ve also been reading articles about the history of Hamas and Gaza for a course I’m taking. And a couple of days before the killing of Renee Good, I finished rereading George Orwell’s 1984.
I heard about Good’s death from a close friend, and all I could do was sputter and shake my head. We agreed it was hard to find words for what is happening.
The next day I woke up wondering what I would say if I were to attempt a blog post. Here’s the poem that came out.
No Words
What can i say?
“Atrocity” becomes cliché
i could say it’s atrocious
But
What is the opposite of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?
A “very, very bad man”
A dumbing down
A numbing down
An all-too-real version of Newspeak
A doubleplusOrwellian stifling of the imagination
of the ability to discuss and comprehend nuance
A reversion
An extra-retro-regurgitation
A regression
to might makes right
to mine mine mine
to burn baby burn
to the war of all against all all the time
me tarzan, you jane
me doubleplus good
you doubleplus ungood
Learning some of the convoluted histories of how we got here might help
Like how Israel supported Hamas to foment dissent among Palestinians so they could claim there was no negotiating partner
Or how the mainstream media helped create the two-year-old-tantrum of a real estate mogul who escaped New York and is now not-single-handedly mangling whatever modicum of world order remains
But Orwell’s version of erasing the past becomes obsolete
in the face of today’s deepfakery
and all too often
i settle for an emoticon
in this case
or 
Yes, thank you for these words Becca. To me it feels like trapped in bad B sci fi movie, who else would kill then say “fuckin bithch” yet we have all heard that in movies. Also seeds in patriarchy. Simple things like my credit card company requiring my husband to sign as “primary” on a duspute form enforces the rights in males to power.
Yes, WORD!!
You could speed it up and go in front of mic and people would be clicking fingers to the jazz.
I didn’t know that Israeli-Hana’s history, but it doesn’t surprise me.
Thank you for putting out the realness of this mess!
This poem addresses the hypocritical dichotomies of our time with a playfulness in words that speaks to our need for the creative edge to articulate what we are witnessing at home and abroad. With words like freedom, democracy, international law, free speech, and dignity being turned on their heads, finding the right words can be challenging, but without it, how can we speak out?