Goshawk & The Junkyard Poem by Jonathan Andrew Perez

Socialism: (n.)the moment when the masses represent the predator, and the prey come to honest survivalism of the fittest


Cuba Libre: what does community mean to you
When they overthrow the Monarchy.

In the Red sand, a red tide, metals and copper divine
A serfdom to what is already given:

The Goshawk is a well-worn clergyman
Acre over acre over the servi, cotarii, bordarii,

Who terminates any & all privileges
Of illegal squatters in the junkyard.

The remainder of the tenants, free serfs, quietly prayed:
-035. Ration number, power to the People at last.

Field mouse, shrew, vole, sparrow, chickadee
Formed a Commune in honor of those who didn't fall back to earth, un-living.

They repented in conveyed recycled bins:
Within Evian bottle, beer cans, sanitation canisters.

All hunting comes after dark, for some much too quickly.
The whole thing inspired a Cult of inalienable beings -

& the Goshawk bargains its tenure suddenly, fiending
what most can barely see, things leaning.

The most ruthless among them quantify every little creak, wisp, pungent smell
& hunt the very thing that hunted them, sentence Fear to torture and labor;

embody rattled terrorism-you have nothing to lost but your chains
fierce, non-descript, and gaudy.

While others hide beneath deformed scrap metal, as if Noah's Ark
to protect against predator floods, salvaged, inherited;

There is no equilibrium for the alienated district
in the diminished light, totaling.

Others live in a favor of a more equitable bargain,
To just be beneath dismantled junk and coexist mercifully.

While the bold leave, their very being in the remains of day -
Serves a revolutionary counter-symbolism.