Dull, now babbles some
wanna-be Socrates.
A Plato of the non-
existent preverbal page.
An awkward stammer
and pause gone about
with forced emotion.
So forced that it has no force,
no power,
gone and now at rest,
deserving non of its fake praise.
Lofty lust, and more incoherent
babbles and rambles in the name
of some forgotten crackpot
pipe dream.
Again this “philosopher” speaks,
and the actual teacher wretches in the corner,
excess is the key word
of the wanna-be Socrates.
So many tears,
So many years,
So many fears,
So many beers.
So many jokes,
So many tokes.
So many drugs,
So many hugs.
So much pain,
So much gain.
These are the things to live for,
So many things,
And so many more.
A wise man once said “It’s wrong when it stops being fun.”
Well, I have to ask myself, has it?
Has pining over the right word and cadence lost its spark?
What, except the dark cloud that seeps its invisible cloak on my psyche,
Keeps me from putting all for the gods and earthly kind to see,
to hear,
to learn the truth.
Poetry is not supposed to be work,
or is that too bourgeois?
I say poetry like anything can be rebranded for the worst,
but poetry is thought, the one thing that cannot be erased.
Poetry, is something to make all our own.
So, has it stopped being fun?
Not by a long shot.
Soul and Pain.
Here we are again,
A dying planet and a line of willful morons
Humping their hands while complaining about the better sex.
No game, and they won’t shut up about it.
Our so called leaders are afraid to lead
Because they might not be leaders anymore if they do.
Complacency is safer than action only if you’re rich.
Sex and violence and sexual violence.
Two souls comrades butchered in the streets.
Lynchings protected by badges and city hall.
Soul and pain.
21st century lies and truth.
Soul and pain.
A fearful night,
and a burned bridge freshly smolders.
Such is the life of a hopeless radical.
Less sexy than a hopeless romantic,
but more useful than a hopeless idealist.
Two are ideal hands of the state,
whose hands when pressed against us
create our struggle.
Our struggle,
Our political struggle.
The hopeless radical knows
that identity is not solidarity,
and logic cannot fixate on rhetoric.
The pressing hands,
They ignite and explode gaslights
To burn and humiliate us.
This is the life of the hopeless radical,
Of the unbowed optimist.
The state, the struggle,
The hands against us,
And our rhetorical traditions.
This is our life,
The life of the unbowed,
of the unbroken,
of the hopeless radical.
Would have,
Could have,
Should have.
These words which only pay lip service
to memory and potential
and attribute cause to regret
Serve no purpose but to hinder us
As our world decays.
We owe it to ourselves,
To our living legacies still too young to fend for themselves,
We owe it to them to act.
To organize and hope.
Two words to embody and elevate,
While we smash the banks of marble,
And pine for the fjords of freedom.
Would have,
Could have,
Should have.
Nay.
Will have.
Can have.
Shall have.
The Poet as the Revolutionary
The poet as a revolutionary
is an all too common trope.
So what happened?
Where did they all go?
Where are the poets and lyrics
and bards who can spark the imagination
of a generation
to end the segregation
and the era of hate.
The poet as revolutionary,
A common but missing motif,
We have minds running for office
all of a generation inspired.
So dare does a poet
question their purpose?
Even now,
Even in a time of awakening,
Where conscious privilege cannot be forsaken?
The poet as revolutionary,
and the leaderless movement of leaders.
Poetry has its politics,
its stake,
its place in the revolution
and it always will.
The poet as revolutionary,
the romantics
and the voices of their days.
