What if poetry were as recognizable to the general public as commercial jingles (The best part of waking up, is Folger’s in your cup), pop music, or celebrities?
Like anything hypothetical
Slogans are easy to pay for
(Build that wall! Build that wall!)
There are epochal battles blazing around the world,
Blinding to those who look, shrapnel of noon-day sun
In the concerned citizen’s eye.
I came of age when computers, and then the Internet,
Came of age, magic I could partake of
Unlike the alcohol of the adult world
Whose pleasures jaundice the once-idealistic.
I’m no Dante, lost though I may be,
Nor you my Beatrice, just as lost to me.
Yet the passions ring, silent to your ear—
O brooding lyric, lead on! Lo these many years:
Think of a single autumnal leaf,
Ablaze like a sun consuming itself;
The closer to death the brighter
It glows, crackling like a fireplace
Straining against a winter yet to arrive
If poets are the legislators of the world,
What am I doing in a private school where rich kids
Discover the world belongs to them?
To resist through nonviolence, yes—
I’ll do what the data says is wise.
But to love is another matter:
I may wave the flag, but I am no patriot;
Is it not better to burn what they betray?
You notice your parents’ aging as you do your own:
Not at all, then in a photo, all at once.
