Bookshelves go missing authorities find them a few days later in the middle of the burning forest they’re crying nobody fills them up with poetry anymore afterward, hieroglyphic firefighters come running out through the smoke wearing tree rings on their fingers married to what’s wasting away but unsure of what to do about it manifest asphyxiation from sea to shining sea old white men made from leftover pizza crust waging war on all the beautiful things it’s like when you crack open a snow globe in the rain it’s like hummingbirds sucking on e-cigs it’s like Styrofoam ballerinas how stillness swings to the rhythm of love because there’s no other way except we’ve forgotten all about that a billion bedbugs leaping or are they shooting stars? it’s hard figuring out how to fix things especially when apathy sets in my partner & I haven’t left the house in five days, maybe more our pixelated radio always playing Beethoven & Springsteen a nonstop symphony of Nebraskas Midwest or Mideast living we’re all drinking horse blood dreaming about the apocalypse to pass the time until hope is hospice we talk about what we’ve lost they tell me that Grindr killed glory holes how they miss the pageantry of the abyss I tell them I like The Abyss the movie starring Ed Harris aliens at the bottom of the ocean loud moaning before death but there’s more to it than that confess we miss our youthful brains when we thought the sky was the ocean upside down sinking ships, the sailors who chain smoke what “shine’ really means or confess we’ll never have a conversation quite like the one on our first date how you were talking about Soviet consonants floating in space I was like, “I think you mean cosmonauts” but you were insistent “I’m talking about language vanishing vowels, whatever’s left” the abuse of power equals the silencing of poets or the vanquishing of passion confess that young poets will save us all teens who still believe in rawness in painting over the whites of winters the salmonellas of summers finding colors more suited for their winds, for our times let’s train them in the art of burglary in technical subterfuge, in cutting all cords let’s give them bulletproof vests, but also metaphorical ones let’s show them how to steal the typewriters that famous authors wrote on all the dead giants who still cast narrow-minded shadows because we always need young poets to reuse ghostly energy to create stronger literature for them to jam dusty typewriters into their chests for them to travel the country a caravan of resurrection across America into the bedrooms of depressed kids looking for acceptance into classrooms on fire where the air is full of damnation onto streets moaning music into marrow let’s teach them that they are a miracle that poetry is a necessary heist that words belong to everyone that they are a living, breathing museum that the future will cherish let’s teach them not to chill so much they become like icebergs in couch cushions playing with pills or Twitter arguing about the abyss let’s teach them how to feel warmth where they least expect it that their hearts should never be full of regret that there’s always work to be done that no matter what happens, life is still beautiful

Poets Resist is published by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.