This Is A Social Justice Poem

This is a social justice poem

about Jill staring at the lawn
so long that it breaks into pixels
and shimmers through water
while her husband cries into his sleeve
and cleans out a tiny locker full of tools

An anticapitalist poem

about Tomas reimagining his genitals
and singing forth a new weapon
to draw a harpy’s bead on ecstasy

A racial harmony poem

looped over a forsaken beat
with a noose in its mitts
while a dead suburb of heaven steaming
in the middle distance

This is a poem for the gross domestic product

slipping one by us
as it turns its hip-hop vices
into remedial charges

This is an empowerment poem

which scrambles to eat its placenta
for the protein and the soul scraps adhering
to the bloody rags on the kitchen floor

The poems come pleading
to put war in the docket
peace on the barstool
and music in the porches
of the weary king’s ears

The poems come a-curdling
in corners of convenience stores staffed
by the blue soldiers of the new
waving the scent of their empty pockets
at the promoters

But here is Jill dancing with her blurry eyes
for the comfort of her representative child-man
and his stranded dream
And here is Tomas with his re-imagined arms
moving furniture and earthquaking routine drama
to make a home

This is a social justice poem
about how it is that a poem
doesn’t mean a damn thing
to those trying to figure out
how a cherry bough
can hold a noose and flowers
at the same time