Poetry no longer belongs to you.
The time for flowery prose
Melodious rhymes and
Lovely imagery ended with the first cracks in the sidewalk
Of our adolescence.
The occasion for poems about rain “pitter pattering”
On the rooftops and the first flowers rising
In the dawn of spring is over.
We do not have any demand for prose on the passage of life
And how you feel about it
Or desire to read peachy poetry on the brightness you feel
Because life is so fantastic
Right?
We no longer need your poetry.
We need our poetry.
We need poems ripped from our souls
Like the weeds rip through concrete in overgrown
City streets everyone forgot about.
It’s time for poems we pulled from the burning car
By smashing our fists into the forgotten window
To our childhood.
We need poetry eighteen years in the making
Stuffed in the back of the throats of those who desperately need to
Throw up the words to keep breathing.
The occasion has come for prose harsh like knives
To cut open the eyes of those who have chosen to blind themselves
In order to forget the dismantled world.
Society no longer needs poetry to make everyone
Feel better or happier or more peaceful
Society needs poetry to create revolutions.
It’s time to use words like rocks
to move people into action
From the couches they stick to
clammily
as they forget the wreckage outside.
It’s time to bloody our knuckles breaking down the walls in
The minds of those who have chosen to close themselves off
To the truth about what’s going on around them.
You believe we are limited by our experience
But frankly the limits exist in your inability to accept what we’ve seen.
Our experiences range from wars to homelessness, deaths to the falling of our friends
Into the waiting arms of drugs and alcoholism, and severe anxiety and depression to hatred.
All felt in the stuffy classrooms with the florescent lights meant to blind us from
The truth.
The world outside is crumbling, and we are no longer blinded
By sonnets and prose.
We have the poetry.
We see the scorched earth.
It’s time for you to hear us.