What Did You Do?

I made art.

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I spoke truth as I saw it,

led with feeling and heart,

did my best to douse the flames of mass delusion.

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I made art of every kind.

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I wrote words like these,

scrawled messages on concrete pillars,

pinned posters on light poles, wrote truths on burlap.

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I fought fear with art.

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I created photo montages,

recorded my poems in my own voice,

a volume of heartbreak as the dream slowly died.

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Art as prayer, art as healing.

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In the time of the bully, the era of the coward,

I made art to keep hope alive,

remind us (myself most of all) that compassion is power,

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empathy is strength,

forgiveness is unassailable,

and only love can save this broken land.

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I made art to make good trouble.

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I made art to help myself heal.

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I made art to clear the fog from their eyes.

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And when the Dark Times are over,

my young ones will ask what I did

while the empire was strangling itself.

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“He made art,” my children will tell them.

“He held Light up to the Darkness,

he created fearlessly and joyously.

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“He made art.”

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What did you do?