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Cockroach Poet
Mark Walsh
These lines are not for the New Romantics, living in hovels,
while diving into dumpsters and writing their lines on stained napkins.
These lines are not for the Old Beats, coursing through back alleys at midnight
while on the make for a documentary filmmaker.
These lines are not for the Libertine Punks, promoting their alienation
while ordering D.I.Y. gear from online conglomerates.
These lines are not for the Influencing Youth, pointing luxurious fingers
while duped into donating their lives to Russian hackers.
These lines are not for the Tone-deaf Bloggers, blissful in their slow-
walk judgments, impervious to a retraction.
These lines are not for the Wholesome Crowd, twitching in the present
while nervously searching for the exit to 1950.
These lines might be for the Broad-stroke Marketeers,
earless and tribal stacked,
having us gargle tepid vinegar until we all agree it’s Peruvian coffee,
who tout the purity of coal and the vitality of tobacco,
and devise a killing language more accurate than an actuary’s forecast,
who bake bleach into pudding mix, uproot our senses
until we believe clear-cutting the Amazon creates
more lives than it saves jobs.
These lines are not for the Overripe Pundits, vomiting spin
while parsing lies for the sweet sleep of the intelligentsia.
These lines are not for the Unholy Senators, cashing dense checks
while testifying about their timid lack of action.
These lines are not for the Hustling Lawyers, defending their gonads
while negotiating book deals at the sentencing of their clients.
These lines are not for the Raging Boys, combusting at will,
while silently weeping for the warmth of their mothers’ shoulders.
These lines are not for the Mad Ecologists, starving on local fruit
while welcoming the silence that greets them in the morning.
These lines are not for the Grim Scientists, quantifying their data
while calmly drafting their children’s last will and testament.
These lines are for the insects with nuclear armor,
with peripheral vision wide enough to know compromise,
who, in their own time, will evolve a civilization from our ruins,
create strange music and new logic and an economics that
forecasts in five dimensions,
who, while applying tentacled observations to rusted steel & busted concrete,
follow broken lines skyward and ask—
”Even now such beauty. I wonder what happened?”
—
Mark Walsh is an English professor at Massasoit Community College in Brockton, MA. His recent publications include Abandoned Mine, Lily Poetry Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, and The Beatnik Cowboy.
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The Yearbook of the Mind by Gabriella Brand
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