Anti-lamentation
A poem by Sam Friedman

Sometimes, when hot and tired,
I wonder why I dream
of future societies
where all can live
fulfilled.
Won’t the warming kill us long before,
driven by the metastatic cancer
of capital’s neverending need for more?
But then I think:
Maybe so.
But maybe not.
And while we wait the decades
before we know what doom awaits us,
think of the miracles of love
we can create
if our angry crowds banish capital
from off the Earth.
We can build dikes together,
load ships with grain
for starving survivors
in South Africa, the Italian
Archipelago, and the migrants
after the deluge sinks Florida
like Atlantis long before.
And as we work together
to save what can be saved,
perhaps build the long-sought,
long-lost
beloved community,
dike by dike,
grain by grain.
And perhaps even salvage some new civilization
where our remnant few
can thrive among the ruins.

Featured Image credit: Molly Costello; modified by Tempest.
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Sam Friedman was a rank-and-file editor for the daily strike bulletin at Montclair State in 1974. Later, during the Reagan/Bush years, he organized a PEF local at the non-profit organization where he was working. He is the author of Teamster Rank and File, and also the author of a book of poetry about efforts to organize a socialist worker current in the 1970s and early ‘80s, available for free at https://imhojournal.org/wp-content/uploads/Friedman-S.-2022.-A-Precious-Residue.pdf. Friedman is also a member of Tempest Collective, the People’s CDC, and the Central Jersey Coalition against Endless War.