All interested responses welcome.

Friday 13 May 2016

How Could You Not Know?


How could you not know? about
prisons, when we’ve met behind the bars of several,
brought books in, and denied that mere walls
should enslave us..?

Dear, I saw the covering over your head, the stain
of inherited guilt seeping through the cloth.
Love, I once saw the light falling flat
on your shoulders, your eyes weeping against the glare.
Friend, I heard how you dropped to the Post Office
steps, dying right on them, a heart attack,
no one helped.

Our elder author, lady with
the lilt still when she reads, she says poetry
will save the world. I have my doubts.  But
hope.  As you hope also.
So how can you not see that the pettiness
of blind ego drags us to a page of broken prose,
tramples the beautiful words into bitterness.

Come, be a safeguard now, frisk me, making sure
I carry no arms.  Sit with me here
and we shall write lines so diaphanous and proud
they’ll hold the very air in place.



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