Had the honor and pleasure of reading last night with Print Preview, a collection of Antigonish wordsmiths antigonightfest #antigonight #100tpc
This poem, titled "Change yr", written by me is what I read.
------------------------------------------------------------ Change yr Change the oil
Change your shirt
Change the litter box
Change the clocks
Change your prescription
Change your mind
Change your password
Change the baby
You’ve got to change your evil ways, baby
before I stop loving….But, but…...maybe
It’s a different kind of change, altogether
Change is constant. Check out the weather
A hundred thousand poets for change: I get it now
Indeed! It’s all so simple yet, yet somehow…
You’d think that rather than writing for change,
Poets demand raises. Is it so strange?
Statistics indicate an era of wage stagnation
Must this imply recession of the imagination?
Our minds overflow, not so our wallet.
Someone has to so I’ll do it. I’ll call it
Demand more for your stanza and verses
Than contempt, eyerolls, and mumbled curses.
Poets for change! We’ve all had enough!
Nickels and dimes won’t let me buy stuff.
And the penny? The penny! Don’t get me started!
Vamoose! Begone copper one! Don’t be broken-hearted.
The penny had a good run. It was brown. It was fun.
But it’s done. It flew too close to the sun.
And crashed to earth. Examine the sidewalk. You’ll find one.
Dusty and dirty, no doubt -- no longer glary
Yet I come not to praise the penny, but to bury.
Cries of "You killed penny! You bastards!" shall not be uttered.
Returning to poems (how my bread is buttered).
Consider a hundred thousand poets for change
Clammering away dressed very strange.
Many wonderful people -- sure some of them jerks.
So you can see how poets for change really irks.
We need shelter and food. Some of us pills
Folding money, paper money… pay us in bills.
Naysayers among you, I know what you're saying.
This isn’t work. It’s a laugh. We poets are playing.
Sure, perhaps a sliding scale could be determined.
No need to be intransigent a la Strom Thurmond.
Epics, sonnets, epigrams... less for free verse
As long as there’s dough to put in our purse.
Of course there’s more serious critique.
The role of poems in oppressing the meek.
“No ethnic cleansing without poetry!” Slavoj Žižek has said.
It’s true: poems rejoice the vanquished dead
And inspire slaughter of innocents.
Truly hard to make any sense.
Yet, poems offer hope & inspire wonder.
Horror and beauty coexist in lightning and thunder.
Wrestle with the contradiction.
Better this than writing fiction.
The best verse has merit.
I urge you to share it.
Write to unite. Don’t tear asunder.
