American Sadness

A Poem by Dr. Barry Lubetkin / New York City

Protestors outside of the Supreme Court after it was announced that Roe v. Wade had been overturned

I lived through Vietnam and did not weep

when my lottery number was called.

I lived through Nixon’s Watergate

and did not weep

when the criminal was pardoned

and escaped steel bars and an orange shirt.

I did not weep when the Towers came down

and I breathed in human remains,

volunteering near the pile.

Today I wept.

I wept for a profoundly divided America.

An America that I love.

I wept for a Supreme Court

gone mad with political power,

demeaning women who for 50 years

believed that they owned their own bodies.

I wept for a future

when angry young men and women

will solve sidewalk arguments

with pistols strapped to their hips.

I wept for a government

populated by sociopaths and cowards,

who would grind their sacred oaths

into the dirt of our Capitol.

I wept for a brewing civil war

and for those who will foment

and welcome one.

My sadness has exhausted me,

my anger has depleted me,

and in the end, I wept for myself.

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Barry Lubetkin, Ph.D. is the co-director and co-founder of the Institute for Behavior Therapy in New York City. The Institute for Behavior Therapy is the oldest private cognitive behavior center in the United States.