This Is What Happens When The Poet Runs Out Of Medicine Poem by Noah Smits

This is what happens when
the poet runs out
of a short supply of medicine
that keeps him well stout:

This is what happens when
our words lose meaning
and our syllables are seen as ends
themselves, not meeting:

This is what happens when
the pointless prevails:
beastly ignorance would venge to win,
our tongues would grow tails,

and on two legs we'd stand, across the room
looking at one another, mics in hand.
Our assertions boom, our curses mutter,
since clarity's bland, and charity's tomb
was built by our mothers—sealed by our dads.
In this primal gloom, discourse is smothered.

What are we?
Look at me and tell me that I'm not just an overgrown baby man whose snot
and tears and belches, petty squelches, still abide in abundant lots
but now disguised; my feeble cries are deeper now and therefore wise.

Who are we?
Look at me and tell me that we're not just infants with inhibitions we got
as societal pressures came to suppress our deepest and most basic wants:
for Mom to hold us, soothe our souls, and wipe away the tears that roll.

What are we?
Look at us and tell us that we're not just worms and fish and arthropods
who killed ourselves so many times that we befriended death and invented gods
to convince us our creators were more than nematodes and horny swordfish,

still on two legs we stand up tall and proud
considering ourselves: Woman, and Man,
and more than just loud: we have moved past yells.
To revert is to hand over our crowds
to the primitive hell that we once spanned
before we were endowed with diction's help.