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i know of poems that linger before the mirror yet convey truth
poems with ego with wit with sensibility
i know poems that intend that mean that be
poems with eros that entice & flaunt desire like cliché
i know many postcard poems keepsake poems gilded for anniversary
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STILL, WE NEED A NEW POEM that’s full of friction & force void of euphony
imagine a poem that traps you between walls & clenches its fist in your gut –
how it rips the fabric off your back but cleaves you in heat waves
a poem that grips a child by its lungs while its mother flails about
a poem that’s a girl gasping for air or a father howling in nameless pain
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imagine what such a poem could do! that crumbles dams turbines power lines factories
that thunders in the middle of a festival avalanches the city hall shows its bloodied face everywhere there’s fun or work even in the bedroom the spa the bar & so on
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a poem with no hashtags no placards no petitions
but shuts down schools offices malls hotels hospitals
it declares no RE-VO-LU-TION yet everyone is out flooding the highways
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that is the kind of poem i have in mind:
that feels like a woman tearing off her hair a man cutting his chest with blade
that feels like a tower crashing into a café a train hurtling into a casino
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a poem that bears the heft of disaster & sounds the collapse of what we covet
that paints the mania of what we believe we’ve tamed or long defaced
picture a poem with the violence of oil on water of flares scorching the sky
ugly as the stench of what is left of turtles or whales toxin-ed by human greed
a poem full of rotting squids & swallows & starfish & squirrels & skunks & sharks
motley species we’ve killed since we forged god out of money
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a poem that neither fudges nor adorns fact but sulphur(s) & burns through our bile
even as it bewails the biosphere what Nature loses every minute we inhale
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what i mean is we need more than one poem –
we need an OUTRAGE of poems a STAMPEDE of poems
a RIOT of poems.
