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The Lost

The fog rolled heavy, down to blunt the day,
Sharp skyscraper tops dissolved into the gray.
Pale ghosts condensed, one here or there, lone, gaunt:
Scared eyes, blank masks, as if condemned to haunt
These empty streets that once were thronged with life.
They hurry with held breath still, afraid of the air,
The moist sweet air, which the tv claims is rife
With invisible disease. My son despaired:
“There’s nothing left to live for!” To end his pain
He ran into the street, but no cars came.

Two weeks became two months, and then a year;
No family, friends, just endless broadcast fear.
The coiled spring snapped: The mob burst out in rage.
The boob tube babblers dutifully flipped the page,
And dubbed them “mostly peaceful” protests, straight-faced;
Behind them, beatings, deaths, whole cities ablaze.
As the flames and bodies piled higher, along with our grief,
The message was clear: No pardon, hope, or relief.

We’re lost, bereft, like the fallen who slink in shame,
As not worth rapture when the Savior came.
We’re seen, and run, but evil never tires,
And is baying for our heads. The cops retired,
Withdrawn by rulers safe in castles we built.
They saunter out, blissfully free from guilt,
To bless the mob for all they’ve set alight.
The mob descends; a fool few stand and fight.
The roar that rises, fading as we run,
Confirms our fears: Again, the worst have won.

We’ve reached the end, nowhere to hide, no escape.
The lucky will be beaten, maimed, or raped.
Not snow, but ash floats down to gently kiss
Us with the memory of the peace we miss.
A red—not sunset—grows; we turn, eyes grave,
Our only shield a prayer: Let me be brave.

.

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Adam Wasem is a writer living in Chicago.

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11 Responses

  1. Cheryl Corey

    Adam, I can’t even imagine the mentality of people who would commit such destruction. As a resident of the windy city, you’ve done a great job of capturing those moments and the sentiments of those who lived through it. The only line I find a bit confusing is “The mob descends; a fool few stand and fight.” I expected it to read “a foolish few…”.

    and therefore have

    Reply
    • Adam Wasem

      Thank you, Cheryl, for your appreciation. To be frank, though, I intended the poem to be applicable to America’s big cities in general, since Chicago was far from alone in undergoing riots. And I admit the formulation “a fool few” is a bit antiquated, but it made the line scan better. And I’ve often felt that just because a usage is a bit antiquated, doesn’t mean it can’t be repurposed.

      Reply
  2. Margaret Coats

    Adam, it must have taken time and care to create this haunting atmosphere that depicts the loss of everything there is to live for. The length of the poem only allows you to sketch events and give suggestive commentary; this is the stuff dystopic novels are made of–but you don’t miss much. I hope your own son was not among the many young suicides, and more persons of all ages who have felt suicidal. Your lines are sometimes rough and the rhymes imperfect, but I commend them as entirely in keeping with the thoroughly dismal tone. In fact, I was surprised by the ending that finally offers what might be called “the turn” in a sonnet. Fine use of iambic meter in “Let ME be BRAVE.”

    Reply
    • Adam Wasem

      Thanks for your careful attention, Margaret. You are right, I jotted down a few lines over a year ago when the Covid absurdity first began, but didn’t come up with the bulk of it until the Rittenhouse trial crystallized the depth of the insanity. Once I realized that the politicians and their Big Tech and corporate media handmaidens were literally doing everything in their power to not only demonize, but outright criminalize self-defense against a violent mob, the rest of it came fairly quickly. Maybe 3 or 4 evenings total, just to polish all the rhymes up and make it all scan, more or less. Not perfectly, as you noticed, since a certain elliptical terseness seemed to fit both the subject matter and the tone, as you also noticed.

      Frankly, I have never been overly concerned with perfect scansion or perfect rhyme. Meter and rhyme are devices to keep the reader engaged and make the experience memorable, I’ve always thought, and as long as the poem is “rid(ing) the skin of its own melting,” as Frost put it, well enough, the reader will be engrossed enough not to notice, or, if they notice, not to care. In this case, there are enough full rhymes and perfectly iambic lines to keep the reader engaged when there is a departure, and that’s my ultimate goal. And thank you for your concern, but no, my son was not literally among the suicides or the suicidal, although he has suffered–and still suffers–like all children cruelly did and do during our ongoing Covidiocy. And I’m glad you were surprised, by the ending, as that was my intention. Even when things are darkest, we can still be surprised by hope, if not in this life, then the next.

      Reply
      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Mr. Wasem —

        There’s one sentence in your above post that should be carved in granite: “Once I realized that the politicians and their Big Tech and corporate media handmaidens were literally doing everything in their power not only to demonize, but outright criminalize self-defense against a violent mob, the rest of it came fairly quickly.”

        It didn’t just help you to write the poem. It brought you to a crucial realization about what kind of malignant evil we face.

        This process is called being “red-pilled,” and we need to pray that it happens to every single conservative in the United States. In our ranks there are still too many pietists and fence-sitters and believers in the essential “good will” of our enemies, and those gutless types will weep and wail and preach us into our graves.

        Chicago is only a taste of what we will be facing shortly in the United States.

      • Adam Wasem

        Mr Salemi (below),
        I can’t seem to reply to your post somehow, so I will reply to mine. Very perceptive of you, but I assure you I have been red-pilled for a long time already. The term you may be looking for is something more like “black-pilled,” or whatever the term is for someone who’s gone so far down the rabbit hole they’ve come out in China. I’ve been so black-pilled this is the first place I’ve submitted to in 13 years, simply because, as you’ve described in your essays elsewhere on this site, poetry (and the broader culture with it) has degenerated so badly that I didn’t see the point.

  3. Paul Freeman

    The personal nature of the subject matter comes through loud and clear in this poem.

    Thanks for the read, Adam.

    Reply
    • Adam Wasem

      You’re quite welcome. I suppose it is personal, at that, insofar as it delineates the mood of fear Americans in urban centers endured the past two years, as well as the cruel covid strictures that, as I indicated in my response to Margaret, have been hardest on our children.

      Reply
  4. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Adam, this poem is a refreshing draught of blazing truth after the tsunami of lies and force-fed fear we endure on a daily basis. You have tapped into the mood of a nation with a raw honesty that connects with me and will connect with many. The images you paint with words are stark and real… unlike those clips of news that press the cognitive dissonance button as we watch those “mostly peaceful” protests… ” while “Behind them, beatings, deaths, whole cities [are] ablaze.” The fear is real for countless numbers… the violence and crime are spreading to small towns too. Thank you very much for this impactful poem that shines a much-needed light on the skullduggery swept under the carpet.

    Reply
    • Adam Wasem

      Thanks very much for that high praise. No image I could come up with is too stark or grim for our current social and political situation–absolutely a case where the truth is more dystopic than fiction–and I’m very gratified you feel that also. Writing it seemed like tapping into a bottomless well of horror at what has happened to not just our country, but the world in the past 2 years, and if I can reach just a few people as perceptive as yourself, the poem will have done its work. I have enjoyed many of your poems on this site as well, I just wasn’t prepared to post comments on other people’s work until after this one posted.

      Reply

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