Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Benjamin Brezner

As the incoming administration builds its agenda of attack on marginalized people, on freedom of speech, on the earth itself, poetry will continue to be an essential voice of resistance. Poets will speak out in solidarity, united against hatred, systemic oppression, and violence and for justice, beauty, and community.

                

In this spirit, Split This Rock is offering its blog as a Virtual Open Mic. For the rest of this frightening month, January of 2017, we invite you to send us poems of resistance, power, and resilience.

We will post every poem we receive unless it is offensive (containing language that is derogatory toward marginalized groups, that belittles, uses hurtful stereotypes, explicitly condones or implies a call for violence, etc.). After the Virtual Open Mic closes, we hope to print out and mail all of the poems to the White House.

For guidelines on how to submit poems for this call, visit the Call for Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience blog post. 

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Blues for the End of an Era
by Benjamin Brezner

I have to say,

to suck and spit venom.

Meaning can't be justified

and neither can I,

but here we both are.

Mouth to mouth.

Breath to breath.

Hands wet with each other

in the cold car,

begging for the same thing

from the open sky.

Trees shake patient

heads in the wind.

My kisses are children's

wishes for water.

My smiles stroll alleys,

smack crow bars in palms.

I'm furious that this is it:

watching everyone

I love die slowly.

Living as though

there were more to life

than eating and

loving and

breathing and

dying.

I bought a polka-dot float

with the head of a horse

to ride through the flood.

I popped it, hating

my own acquiescence.

I bought another,

a frog, this time, for Eastern luck.

I opened the valve, and

the blind hope I’d blown in

ate a puppy for breakfast.

The age of metaphor is over.

The world is ending.

Every minute spent scratching

our nails through layers

of implied significance

is another we can't spend

doubling back

for the things we've forgotten

in the back seat before

electric teeth seize us up,

pass on

with our names

on their tongues.

Why can't I stop thinking

about the god-damned

meaning of life

when there are so many

people dying or suffering,

their deaths so

entangled,

impenetrable?

Why can I only feel

scared or bewildered

or doubt myself and wonder

if I'm doing enough?

Why am I

the only person I can

think about, can manage

to help,

to soothe,

to write about?

You may be asking yourself

these questions, too.