For All You Gluten-Free Ragers

For all you gluten-free millennials (& more) raging against the absurdity of our present moment:

Yesterday evening, Breonna Taylor’s killers were left uncharged in Louisville. Most current events in America (and everywhere, but alas, we are American and so we are -- if concerned about anything apart from our individual hedonism -- concerned most with our own country and its woes) are beyond disturbing enough to keep people awake at night, so today I woke up at 3:30AM unable to sleep. In one snoozy blink, it was 7AM and I had been poring over the poem below for nearly four hours (aka recording sentiments for one hour and flipping through a thesaurus — my favorite book — for three).

Of course it felt cathartic to write something down (as it always does), but with my deepest endearment I hope it might also be cathartic to read, for you who are (ever were) still here after yet another year of me going silent. (Hmm, a theme to ponder.) Sending love as together we fight against injustice, greed, indifference; and progress toward something new. XX

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NEW WHEAT

you burned the land —

this land

with wheat fields waving

and dust clouds rolling,

to establish instead your city

and

make monuments

of bronze

and

tall buildings

which separated

those who could

and those who could not

live within the limits.

downtown margin bounds of

classless structures,

architecture

built by destructors

and then you wondered;

why are the people starting fires?

in your glass skyscraper

you were long unconcerned

with autumnal colors

or feuding brothers

near the lake’s rising tide.

disconnected from all that is

raw,

terrestrial,

human;

chaos scares you

— oh it scares you now?

now that your order is in place?

your systems, which

ravaged (continue to ravage)

the earth

and all she has to offer?

did you forget?

how all that is

raw,

terrestrial,

human

will be returned

eventually

in a natural cycle

of restoration —

what did you expect from her?

you can

construct walls

conduct house calls

obstruct justice with handcuffs

and throw away the keys

but you, too, live in an unbarred cell.

there is no escaping

that which has no limits.

there is only outside

where you must

confront your creation.

these streets,

wilderness of concrete,

bricks of someone else’s labor

made the rooms wherein we meet;

gluttonously incomplete,

while wasn’t this was made to be everything?

burn it back.

where might dusty, waving fields

sprout between

shadowy towers?

and when will your fill

become obsolete?

burn it back to the ground

as before, until

from ash emerges

new wheat.