mmmmdcccxxix

     heart is also blank—
     it either grows invisible
     or clamors for attention
              —Wayne Koestenbaum

Please allow me to....
Let me—might I?—find a way
toward some meaning?

Smoke and mirrors
are my default, my
favorite fallback flavor.

A plea’s length, I have it on
experienced authority, is inversely
proportionate to said plea’s success rate.

Please, hear us out the door,
therefore.  Where we may,
armed each with megaphone and flail,

make our legal, logical and anguished point.

We’ve had it with you, the boss of us!
You know, as we do, how
intolerably wrong you are!

The way you deface us!
The way you displace us!
The way you dispose of us!

The more gargantuan the monopoly,
the more miniscule its citizens’

prisons.  

They’re barely alive,
by no choice of their own,
as if they’ve ownership at all.

Enough is enough!

[loudly, through the megaphone:]

Hey assholes!!
I’m not an activist!!
I’ve not a penny to my name!!

So I can’t sue you to the hellish grave you deserve
in order to earn more justice.  Woe are us, you
and the rest of those lying inert beneath your thumb.

...[putting the megaphone down because it has become very heavy]...

...[sitting down slowly onto the ground]...

I’m so exhausted. So
I am just going to sit here
and stare each of you criminals down

as if that is doing something that matters,
knowing full well that it does not.  Until my eyes..
..won’t..open..again....

Don’t worry
(as if you would),
this’ll be over in no time.