Poem: Rogue

 

Rogue

 

this aching planet,

 

a handful of healers cry daily

over its burning, excavated ribs,

 

where no wild things come.

 

crowds scurry in packed cities

amid obvious evil,

but only a few raise their heads.

 

one brave women

watches a wall of smiles

freeze-dry her pleas,

 

swallow them into cold throats

stainless as upscale refrigerators.

 

some teenagers

 

rage against the blood money of empire,

yet the streets ignore, ignore, ignore,

 

or laugh and hurl scorn

 

or ignore, ignore, ignore …

 

a few college students

call those who bow down locust and ants,

call the middle class pharisees,

call the rich posh swine

 

who soil pearls.

 

a sliver of authors, journalists, casters, artists and professors

make a calm case,

 

but no truth of any kind does anything

to steer the march of the scuttlers,

 

or impede the swarm.

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8/17... changed a word

8/16/26 ... eds off and on all day

It looks like this is a version of "Rogue Ants" (2023), which itself is a version of a draft I wrote long ago.  Probably I wrote this poem and Rogue Ants off that draft.  Most of the poems on this blog are re-works of old drafts, thousands of them.  It connects me with the me who wrote the poems, a historic sense of continuity and meaning.