Poem: Price

 

Price

 

fed up

with the unwillingness

of society,

 

i fed the verbal robotics

to an owl

 

and found it was possible

to look without lying,

 

but only

in a flash pan of sobs. 

 

the charge was the slavery

of my heart,

 

though it wasn’t as if justice

offered the sweet breasts

of a muse. 

 

no.

 

it stood on chilly street corners,

wet and detested

by the sirens that came.

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Imagine making the decision, as a citizen in Russia, to protest loudly against Putin.  That would end up far worse than what happens to the person in this poem (?); but the person in this poem is also cast out, like a prophet who will never be heard, and who knows no god is going to enforce justice, and the world is ... just going to be this.  A world run by the Putins and the Trumps and the Xis.  Keep your head down.  And shut up.  Billions of humans have had to learn this lesson.  Billions and billions for over ten thousand years of civilization.  Shut up or die or worse.  But the person in the poem refuses.  The person in this poem is a fool or maybe something more, depending on your point of view.