Wax Philosophical, Michael, In The Second-Person If You Wish, Just Remember This: You Speak For No One Save Yourself … Poem by Dennis Ryan

Sunday morning, June 9, 2024 at 10: 22 a.m. and 11: 22 a.m.; now,12: 56 p.m. and counting, now 1: 19 p.m.,1: 24 p.m.1: 40 p.m. and counting, this poem—of 33+ lines, now 42+ lines—already blocked three time today by Poem Hunter and the police/F.B.I. and yet to be published in ‘New Poems' category … and there has been no movement whatsoever in this ‘New Poems' category in the last hour, suggesting that Poem Hunter is hiding from view poems It has already published, ones, including this poem, that should have already appeared in ‘New Poems' …

'View your enemies
All precious lost brothers, sisters
Change your inner view'
—Michael Hopkins, 'Change Your Inner View', Poem Hunter poem of this morning, published 6/9/24

Save yourself? You can wax philosophical, Michael,
in the second person ('your', etc.) , suit yourself,
but just remember this: you speak for no one but
yourself, save yourself—save your own precious ass.
Who assigned you the prerogative, no one save yourself,
to tell anyone, readers, how to live—me, let alone others—
tell us how to treat enemies when they are at the gate,
already inside of Troy. (Try your spiel on the wives,
husbands, children, murdered in their beds, their ghosts
still in residence there. See how it works, impresses them.
They will visit you in dream, haunt you, cause you to have
nightmares in YOUR bed, kick you out, send you weeping
and reeling. How do you like the use of second-person
pronouns, possessive adjectives now? A bit, perhaps
somewhat prepossessing?) When you have lived in my
shoes—you never will, never will take this bitter pill—
face the extreme violence I have faced (several beatings,
multiple car wrecks caused by third-party drivers, those
car injuries, then hit by cars three times, witnessed beatings
of my sons by police, absorbed perhaps 100 stitches, after-shocks, the trauma, scars that reach from my left forearm
to heaven, Eternity and back) from the police and their third-party informants and sympathizers, their third-party drivers
sent out to injure, maim, kill—yes, at that juncture you
yourself will feel compelled to sympathize, and no longer
issue these uninformed, asinine, naive, inane, idealistic directives like you do right now (Do you get me, fella?
Oh, you do, well then maybe, no …) that miss the mark,
hit far beyond the pale. You haven't been there, fella,
where I have been, am, am all along—nowhere close—
so, again, you have exactly no right to dictate views,
points of view, mine or anyone else's now or ever,
now—get that, fella, felt my leather, spurred, spurred
you in ways in which I would never subject a horse—
the most noble of all animals, better than … As to your
apology, you can shove it where your sun don't shine,
deep down inside where your naive poem also belongs,
inside the crevices of your own you know what. What,
how's that for a second-person directive from hard-lived
experience, the truth that burns, this 'heart and mind'
of mind ('Kokoro' in Japanese) going straight, straight-
forward to the heart of things, real life, right-right away?
Time now to take your medicine, my how-tos the hard way.

—FINIS—