Joshua Keiter

Sometimes shelving the stacks brings you
Unwittingly to books of poetry
Consumed at such an early age
Before you knew too much of the world
Singing each to each too soon! Too soon!
And the metaphors leaping over the moon
Artifacts of a world you thought you could have known
If the burdens of unpaid student loans hadn’t kept you home
While all the business suits wracked up their 401k’s
And the bottom dropped out of the market multiple ways
Now no one has any use for poesy
Not that they ever did but somehow that’s why
When you turn to pages published in 1997
When you were merely a freshman
It sounds like another universe a far rockaway of the heart
That world so far distant you thought about to start
The twentieth century losing religion half a world away
Half of your life was spent this way
Dodging from catastrophe to catastrophe
Hoping the five freedoms hardly enumerated made to see
Somehow the trajectory turned to fascism
The bitter end result of pervasive postmodernism
Who tells the truth? Who even has an opinion?
By turning the channels you can avoid all collision
Even if the election turns a certain way
That doesn’t make the ugliness go away
It was always here it still exists
Even if the resistance somehow resists
We all have so much work to do we haven’t begun
To count the dreams that pass like the breath of everyone

Right now the only
Thing I have energy for
Is pushing refresh

In my email app
For a notification
To make sure the vote

I cast has a chance
To be counted—I may have
Filled in the ovals

Until they were bleeding through

Already the lines are starting to form
Slouching toward ballot booths to be born
Our bodies are waiting to be counted
The challenges we all have surmounted
To raise umbrellas to the coming storm
Already the lines are starting to form
If democracy were priority
We all would be granted seniority
Our time is not our only sacrifice
To play by the rules means not playing nice
We’ve tried to avoid such a viral load
At the rallies gathered just down the road
They may lose the way to their polling place
Justice is served at the end of the race

Today I couldn’t
Take the street I always take
To the library

They were setting up
Tables and chairs for cocktails
I found out later

And when I drove home
A guitar noodled while folks
Sat close together

I went another
Way back home—Main Street protests
Each side of the street

I couldn’t get through
The barricade set up for
The deplorables

So I drove around
The block playing John Lennon’s
Gimme Some Truth as

Loud as I possibly could

The song in my head
That does not go unnoticed
Every single night

I might not have heard
For years or even decades
But there it appears

While doing dishes
Or getting ready for bed
Like I have no choice

I guess I could start
To think the song is finished
But it keeps playing

Whether I listen or not

Spent some time today
Remembering how I thought
That four years ago

The world was ending
Eventually I woke
And it continued

Though not quite without
Reassurance that we would
Come to our senses

Or that we could plan
For anything beyond what
The future may hold

I am still not sure
I ever really woke up
So much uncertain

The endings keep happening

There’s a fly on his head
And his eye is putrid red
Pencearrhea
Pencearrhea

When he won’t shut up
And his eye is full of blood
Pencearrhea
Pencearrhea

When he asks for more time
His plexiglass is full of grime
Pencearrhea
Pencearrhea

When he smirks because white
While she puts out the gaslight
Pencearrhea
Pencearrhea

And his eye’s so red
Oh and the fly’s still on his head
Pencearrhea
Pencearrhea

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Look out for all the
Inherent vitality
Gasping for some air

If it’s on the news
Then it must be news—why else
Discharge at dinner?

At least we now know
All there is to know in fact
It’s really simple

Psychopaths infect
Everyone in their employ
Until none remain