Where does it hurt? Everywhere . . .Dreams of black water, no moon or stars, celestial compass missing.Each day more offenses accumulate. We are frightened for our planet’s survival.No protections for the sanctity of life: global destruction for a profit motive, lack of intention to disguise the plundering of our resources—human, environmental, and material. Will we recognize our country four years from now?How many more bodies tossed on beaches and bombed into oblivion? How many lives lost, opportunities wasted?Fruit withered in the groves, human hunger growing. The delusional man’s nightmare wall, the stuff of his dreams—now the tools of our master of destruction. (Is that his advanced degree?)In action with others, strong bonds of community can create mass demonstrations and interventions when those who are vulnerable are threatened.I think of the courage of the White Helmet workers in Syria; of the Greek islanders who save Syrian refugees; of those preparing to provide shelter for our undocumented workers—possibilities to reclaim life in a time of war and upheaval. We must be those saviors. Not martyrs, but active presences in the lives of those affected: We must build a wall—of resistance.Whether we write prose or poetry, we must use our words scrupulously to counter the lies and ignorance of Trump and his minions, redeeming the value of language by speaking clearly and movingly of what we might lose, what we can save. We must challenge the debasement of language, the manipulations and confabulations generated by Trump and his alt-right alternative-reality gurus. Truth as a sieve, a sifter. We must not let words be spirited away by the dark magic of alternative truths.As so many thinkers have said, we live in a broken world, whose cracks have become rifts. We must fill them with facts, with brave opposition to the lies, with the unambiguous letters of our alphabet, building words to oppose the reckless, swollen, blasphemy of the new regime.Against the blasphemy of the new regime:Every fact counts. Every poem counts. Every word.