They tell me I don’t know
how to make a better world
from this one, or that at least
I never speak of a better one or how
to find it;  they can’t see my fear

that if I spoke of it, wrote of
what I see of the path ahead,
talked (no matter how gently)
of a new world and how it must 
be built on the razing of this one,

they’d lock themselves into a closet
with their favorite artifacts and their slim hope
and not come out again — and they’d 
never hear me when I say that I see
the new world, and the path to it; I talk about it

all the time. I have nothing but hope, in fact; 
I just know that if we’re going to get there, 
one step is the erasure of the artifacts of this one,
and no one wants to hear about 
the need to let go.