Monster, monster how you creep…

What can we do to remain strong in the pandemic and other world disasters right now?

How can we look more deeply to the future and the way out of this current challenge to humanity?

How can we look beyond now with optimism?

As a writer and storyteller I don’t want to tell others how to feel, or what to do, but nor do I want to avoid the monstrous experiences all around us.

I don’t want to be absorbed with myself!

Monster, monster, sent to make me wake ?

I want to find stories that challenge me and others to think, question, examine and make decisions that will empower us all.

There have been so many monsters lurking before this time, that perhaps we did not listen to their mumbling, or take note of their creeping and failed to see them growing and growing.

Maybe we noticed some more than others.

Maybe though we closed our eyes, and listened to their tears, and their moaning…

Those monsters are extremes of wealth and poverty, a lack of access to education for many in the world, systemised racism,  inequality of woman and man,and much much more.

Two steps forward, one step back.

How many monsters can you name?

How many do you see blinking, behind you, away from the light?

So many monsters lurking, growing, following us, and some of us not choosing to look back and tackle them.

I keep thinking of the role of the poet as the canary taking in the toxic fumes to save the miners.  The poet, the artist, the sensitive feeling the struggles sniffing out the monster’s treacherous trails.

Two steps forward, one step back…

But I don’t want to be a canary that is knocked out by the fumes of toxic parts of human experience right now

Monster, monster let me sing !

I want to sing, even if this experience feels like a cage,

around us all.

I want to sing of the beyond.

What is beyond the pandemic?

What will lead us beyond?

Will we let the treacherous overcome us, or will we slay these monsters once and for all?

30/07/2020 (c) June Perkins