Category Archives: politics

James Lee Stanley at Folkstage

(St. Tim’s Coffeehouse)

It is understandable
these days and nights
to feel frustration
turn to anger, then rage
Feel grief, desperation, despair
Feel lost, helpless, depressed
anxious, hopeless, sleepless…
Which doesn’t help you.

Allow 10 minutes to wallow
a bit less or more
then do your primary job
of balancing…even on one toe.
Send out what you want to receive
what you want to give.
Breathe and breathe
feel your heart’s steady beat
miraculous.
Watch the dawn
rose tint the east horizon.
Profusion of spring daffodils bloom
and those little purple-blue, white-centered
flowers we never planted,
(I never remember their name)
but reliably they blanket the beds
bleeding into the spring grass
followed by the grape hyacinths.

We still don’t know the end of
even one story in this complexity.
We don’t know where this will lead.
We do know all this will pass
and what will we be left?
I adamantly refuse to turn into
someone I don’t like or recognize.
Don’t be pulled down
the dark path
fall off the crumbling cliff.
Or if you do, stop
brush off, choose again.
This I ask you
in the name of…

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2026

From my upcoming collection
Rippling Out From Folkstage

Listening to R. Carlos Nakai “Saguaro Sunset”

And inspired by Carney’s speech at DAVOS

The words have not been lining up
calling to me, insisting I catch them
as waves hit and waves hit
and we struggle to breathe
much less smile for minutes carefree
Who will be left at the end of this
what will be recognizable?
Why, just why?
As what was underneath is exposed
and what do we do with that?
Reveal who we are, must be
As we try to sleep
as we eat and comfort
remembering to hydrate
and breathe as deep as can
As we grieve some and resolve
to be kind. even something small
even once…then again
As we donate and write
and act as if…and wait…
for light, radiant
I am not blind to what is
I absorb as much or a bit more
And then I need an antidote
to the toxic, the tragic, the traumatic
Something to carry me through
believing in better
as a possibility
Can you imagine with me?

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2026

From my poetic journal, 1/22/26

“Absolution” from Full Blooming CD

Absolution

Am I absolved
because I knew
about these things,
but could do nothing?

Nothing except feel
and write,
nothing except speak
with passion,
nothing except send
healing energy,
nothing except vote
my conscience,
nothing except to be
in the world a woman of peace.

But I could not stop
atrocities, I could not
heal wounds deep,
inflicted by leaders
blind to the consequences
of their actions.

No, I could not do these things…
and yet I continue walking
from one day to the next,
I continue breathing,
and if I am still living
it must be for some reason.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2004

From my CD, Full Blooming: Selections from a Poetic Journal.
It seemed especially true for me today. Perhaps you too.

Listen here for my poem reading on my Full Blooming CD

60–“Limo Driver from O’Hare Airport” from “Resist the Slide into Darkness”

Listen to poem here: https://youtu.be/nekff0ynG9s

9/9/14

Limo Driver from O’Hare Airport

The light-skinned man from Tunisia, Africa
had been a student dissident
in the old days arrested 11 times
once kept in a cell 1 yard by 1 yard.

A leader perhaps who paid to print a paper
and distributed it one time by
putting packs on tops of lights at the soccer match
then when the first goal was scored the papers

were released by a pulled cord over the cheering crowd.
He was highly educated by his telling
and got a upper level job at a bank
for 8 years. When the government changed

he was targeted, word gotten to his mother
leave tonight or die
and he did, making his way here
to freedom.

We meet him driving the limo
from the airport. He’s married
has a 10 year-old daughter
building a life here. Now he can see

his mother, but will never go back home.
His undiminished love for the place: the first
country in the Arab Spring
he tells us proudly.

From upcoming collection: Resist the Slide into Darkness by Margaret Dubay Mikus

For more poem videos in the series

Expanding Video Poem Project

Starting today, I am broadening my video project beyond my original idea of reading a poem a day from my book, “Thrown Again into the Frazzle Machine,” in chronological order. There are currently 48 videos from that series. The new plan is to record poems I find particularly compelling that day, from all three of my books, as well as unpublished work (which will be here on my blog).

Today’s reading is a poem I wrote in 2010 and posted a couple days ago, about Barack Obama, “Presidential.” Listen here: https://youtu.be/PjgsiLj2Hqg

For all poem videos

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