News from the Muse

The Muse of Lament and Dissent V

Weeping Madonna Credit to 
Sara Spaulding Phillips

When your country strips you of rights and protections, 

it tells you that it no longer 

recognizes you. 

Other times, you realize that you no longer recognize your country…

[The] President…is remaking the country in his image: crude, harsh, gratuitously mean.

—M. Gessen

Opinion Piece in the Sunday NYTimes, Sept. 21, 2025

Introduction: Our Good News and Bad News September

This is the fifth and last News from the Muse featuring political poems from the Deep River Writing Circle. That’s because Deep River will reconvene in October after a four-month break for the summer. That’s because the Muse insists we focus on this coming year’s readings and writings. She is elated to return to her roots in the works of H.D., Robert Duncan, and Diane di Prima—her lineage of poetic ancestors. All of them lived in difficult times, which marked their writings. All of them wrote directly out of mythic consciousness.

In our own times we’ve suffered a good news/bad news September. The good news on Labor Day was demonstrations in every state protesting government “by the rich for the rich.” Their slogan: “Workers over Billionaires.” More good news is that in many communities activists have learned how to intervene when ICE agents kidnap immigrants at court houses and outside Home Depots without due process. The activists observe and document what happens.

The good news in Chicago, where my late parents lived for many years—a city they loved—was that thousands of people came out to protest the Berserker’s plans to invade with Federal troops. So far it hasn’t happened though there are frequent threats.

The bad news is that Federal Troops have invaded Memphis instead, despite the protests of the mayor and the City Council. The bad news, internationally, is that the Berserker has declared war on Venezuela, sending seven warships and a nuclear submarine into the Caribbean Sea. He has ordered military strikes against three speedboats. He has accused them of smuggling drugs, without any proof or due process. Seventeen people were murdered. The bad news is also that my dear friend who lives with her family in Caracas, has written me that people in her country are preparing for war, gathering provisions, alert for dangers from their own Berserk leadership and ours. They pray their power and WIFI keeps working. What is becoming of our world?

The bad news is the horrific assassination of a charismatic young Maga leader, Charlie Kirk, while speaking to students at a University in Utah. This dreadful event stunned the nation. Threatens to tear us apart, even more. It roused the Berserker to threaten all liberal organizations and all free speech. The bad news is that the beloved comedian Jimmy Kimmel was cancelled. The good news is Jimmy Kimmel is back! 

The best news is that Indivisible is working hard to organize “No Kings” demonstrations across the country for Saturday, October 18th. They want millions of protestors to come out and demonstrate. The good/bad news was when Dan and I tried to join their call, it was overwhelmed. The good news, we were able to move to You Tube to see their presentation. It was inspiring to listen to their leaders speak of their aim to build a mass resistance movement, to fight a president who breaks the law and trashes the constitution. It was exciting to plan to join them and assert our right to peaceful protest. We heard: “You are not alone”

“I did not come to you without fear. Courage is not the absence of fear. It’s being able to move through it.”

“We are not here to be for justice. We are here to be it. We’re going to have over 5 million people in the streets this October. 

“Invite everyone you know to join us in the streets on Saturday October 18th!” 

Here's the link to No Kings: https://www.nokings.org/

Commentary on

“Poem In Which I Reflect on Presidents and Death”

This marvelous poem by Connie Hills is full of compelling imagery, dry humor, and deep insights. It reveals many aspects of a rich life as though the storyteller is looking at her past in a reflecting pool. In an arc about America’s politics our storyteller begins with the “B-movie actor” president from the ‘80s and arrives at “Cheeto man” who dominates our present tense. In scenes of landscape and people, the storyteller places herself near the Salish Sea, where she describes visiting her Norwegian friends, Carl Johan and his wife Mabel. The food and the flowers are luminous, as is the ritual scene “of the evening news, where Carl/ranted at the president on the tv screen—his merciless neglect of the most vulnerable among us.” In parenthesis, our storyteller names some of the issues of those days: “(Dear Reader, think AIDS, crack, psychosis, food stamps.)” She then makes an unexpected descent into her gut where the moral compass of the “wise owl” is “good medicine.” 

The storyteller reveals herself as a “beleaguered baby therapist” learning how to listen “to the cries of the canaries among us.” What a moving description of the practice of therapy. Thus, the country’s cultural complexes flow into her personal suffering and her difficult initiation as a healer. The poem tells a story of political awakening, as well as professional and spiritual development. The storyteller’s dear friend Carl’s death, the dangerous politics we are currently “seeped in like some mesothelioma” and her Buddhist practice of meditating on her own death, flow into each other. In the sinister shadow of Cheeto man, the storyteller turns off the news “like some trembling cowardly lion.”

This raises the difficult question about the choices we make in these times, dominated by hate and a “malignant tyrant.” Do we shout at the news like Carl did? Do we take to the streets?

Or do we sit in the woods like Buddha—emptying ourselves of the chaos and the rage—facing our own mortality? The storyteller strains to hear Carl’s voice and gets an answer straight from the natural world. We hear Carl’s spirit calling us to leave the world to “owlets,” who will grow into magical, dangerous night hunters—wise creatures who know how to survive in the dark—something we all need to learn in these chaotic and perilous times. 

Salish Sea Credit to Brandon Olafsson

POEM IN WHICH I REFLECT ON PRESIDENTS AND DEATH
Connie Hills

When the B-movie actor was president
I lived on a houseboat near the Salish Sea.
At the end of the long lake lived Carl Johan—
my grandmother’s friend from Norway,
land of the midnight sun.
His wife, Mabel set daffodils, lilacs,
cactus blossoms on their kitchen table
where we ate dollops of egg salad
nestled in lettuce cups

Photo by Connie Hills (Chair and Flowers)

followed by streusel and hot coffee
in front of the evening news where Carl
ranted at the president on the tv screen—
his merciless neglect of the most vulnerable among us.
(Dear Reader, think AIDS, crack, psychosis, food stamps.)
Mabel tried to shush her husband but I carried
the wise owl’s medicine in the smooth muscles of my gut
as I—a beleaguered baby therapist—sat in a chair
listening to the cries of the canaries among us.

Photo by Connie Hills (Bianca 2)

One gusty night, a lanky Texan they called
Poppy—our next President—appeared on tv
blowing warm thermals under the cool right wing.
Carl lowered his fjord-blue eyes.
I’m leaving this country to you, he ceded.
His tanks of resistance, empty
handing his long fight over to me.
Carl’s sense of his impending death
shook my DNA loose.
I was one third his age with a pink rosy future and
three great horned owl (democrat) presidents before me.

Photo by Connie Hills
(Young Woman with Great Horned Owl)

But since Carl’s purple light faded
and Cheeto man seeped in like some mesothelioma—
kicking down doors, spilling hate,
fracturing families, decimating freedom,
becoming a malignant tyrant who haunts us—

Photo by Connie Hills (Mural of Dragon)

I turn off the news like some trembling cowardly lion,
recite Buddhist meditations on my own death,
favor the cherry sweet songs of robins
outside my north window
and strain to hear Carl’s voice:
It’s okay to leave this world to the owlets.
First, feed them some white mice.

Photo by Connie Hills (Buddha in the Woods)

Bio, Connie Hills

Education is not the filling of a pail,
but the lighting of a fire.
—W.B. Yeats

I slid into Naomi Lowinsky’s Deep River poetry group over a decade ago. Naomi’s unbridled praise for each poem she hears has a settling effect—which allows us to step outside our comfort zone. Naomi is an influencer when it comes to political poetry. 

I wear a tattoo of apathy when it comes to politics. Growing up, my mother and brother argued politics late into the night while my father—a WW-II veteran—and I retreated to our bedrooms. We needed peace. The radical feminists of the 1980’s motto the personal is political rang true when I couldn’t attest to uphold the policies of the president of the United States on a Peace Corps application. In 1984, I met a family friend, Carl Johan—an outspoken ninety-year-old—and was comforted by the thought that socialism could lie in my DNA. But apathy runs deep. I didn’t vote in the presidential election of 2000- thought to be one if the closest presidential races in history. After that, things got so bad I vowed to vote in every election going forward, and even watched the nightly news in 2024—praying that Kamala would win. Then, the worst happened, and I haven’t watched the news since. This is my first political poem. But more importantly—it’s me finding a way out of apathy.