What You’ve Done to My Poetry
Look what you’ve done to my poetry.
‘All for me and none for thee.’
How could you do this? How can you not see
that what you’re doing is killing me?
My verses wither at the brain-stem vine.
‘All for a price and none that’s thine.’
Replace it with shit and consign
the rest to the orbit of a waiting landmine.
Look what you’ve done to my poetry.
‘It’ll all get better. Just wait and see.’
Do more with less, no more quality or quantity,
sipping the tepid dregs of lead-lined tea.
My words drop and decay where they lie.
‘Iron bars for you and not for I.’
Bellies full of souls scorching the sky
garnish little more than a shrug and a sigh.
Look what you’ve done to my poetry.
‘What use is poetry, or literature, or humanity?’
We’ve decided that our main priority
Won’t be education at all, no college, no university.
Only dull, dreadful, deadened work, only productivity.
But God forbid you show the wrong kind of creativity,
something that doesn’t celebrate venomous positivity,
masculinity, or white supremacy.
Look what you’ve done to my poetry:
A pollen-streaked gravestone without a name,
Dead at thirty-eight, and no rhyme.
