The Summer of 2012 (a poem)

As I said in my previous post, at some point prose fails to express what I really feel. And I also begin to observe something that people who have never lived in a dictatorship may be slow to notice: that frank language is actively repressed, that certain truths may not be debated or even mentioned. That is why poetry often flourishes under repressive regimes, where a “secret” language must be used. I see this happening in America… perhaps this is the moment for poetry.

Thinking over the world, in this summer of 2012, this is what I wrote.

Hanging there like an unpaid bill, this inauspicious summer,

With its hot breath shriveling corn:

Ears that fall to dust.

A summer filled with factories for nesting birds:

Tools absorbed in rust.

While in some godforsaken corner,

From where God is said to hail,

A pimp of others' agony,

Grooms the panting hounds of hell.