When The Poets Went On Strike Poem by Gary Corseri

When The Poets Went On Strike



When the Poets Went on Strike

1.

Because there had never been many
Eking out livings in cold-water flats,
Or homeless and broken on urban grates,
Or gathering breadcrumbs, like birds, in parks)
The general public hardly observed
A gradual lessening of the sun’s corona,
A confusion of diphthongs—as though tongues
Wagged lazily; and, everywhere:
A coarsening… a blurring....

The moon-June crowd went on going on
To haphazard applause;
And the apolitical, precious types
Continued pretending power and words
Were water and oil, as they rubbed
Sappiness into the wounds on the runway.

But the children felt a yearning hollowness
They had no words for bridging.
And the old ones hungered to be filled again,
Recalling lines that had cauterized, lines
That had cleansed; lines that had healed.
Lines that had kissed them awake
And asleep. Lines that returned as prayer.

2.

“What do they want? ’ someone wondered. “Surely
There’s enough to deter us, without their
Gobbledygook, roundabout, circumference-
Hugging saying things; intimating this
And that; implying, signifying, hint-
Ing with all their rigamarole-whirligig
About metaphors and similes, images
And scrimmages—rhymes, I mean! —subtly
Adorning fully-intentioned thoughts; as though
Anybody had the time these days to ferret
Meanings from allusions, let alone
Consider fabrications’ implications! ”

3.

But, they persisted; having lost the three-
Thousand-year-old battle to acquaint
Humanity with what it just might mean
To be free in one’s thought, to honor Earth,
To feel the utter serendipity
Of heartbeats and tornadoes, babies
Whispering in dreams and dandelions
In a breeze. They held out… until
An envelope of dullness catacombed
The globe; and scam-artist banksters
And gamester-politicos, and the sham-
Man and sham-woman in their cubicles,
Marching into corridors, stood up an
Esculent moment, looked around, listening,
Wondering: What was it? … Who? … And how,
And why, it mattered.

(first published at Counterpunch,2015)

Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Topic(s) of this poem: art,poetry,politics
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