For all you gluten-free millennials (& more) raging against the corruption 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 straight (aka, recording sentiments for one hour and flipping through a thesaurus — my favorite book — for three hours).
Of course it felt cathartic to write (as it always does), but with my deepest endearment I hope it might also be cathartic to read, for you who are still here after yet another year of me going silent. (Hmm, a theme to ponder.) Sending love as together we fight against injustice, greed, hatred, apathy, and progress toward something new. XX
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.
