SOCIETY.

WHAT IS SOCIETY

And this society, the one we live in, where people in wheelchairs
Are thrown into the trash;
And people named Mikel are picked on in public,
Carry picket signs down foreign-sounding streets, like Pickled Eggs;
Deviled Hands; High Street, the name rolls off your tongue.

The words are like plastic sheets put on a brown couch.
How autumn quickly changes into summer, and summer and winter
Are both entwined,
And monkeys are both riveted by words that are spoken from old vowels;
That the sounds of summer rain drift softly through the dark,
In the dark of the night, and the night

Drops like a monsoon out of Japan; and the Emperor was angry,
And the entire Atlantic Ocean was angry, and it was angry with its voice.
How people think they are not in a society, and how the society
Gets back at the smart people, and the dumb people get everything,
Especially the blondes and men interested in art.

Sometimes, the museums whisper softly at night, and the night
Calls down to the dinosaurs in the museums;
How the museums are like parts and ghosts wander around
In the dark, like softly moving shadows,
And how some people are homeless, and not breathing,
And breath comes out of me, and is me and NOT.

I don’t know what to make of this, what to speak of this,
In the words that pour from my lips, the lips that speak the poetry-how kings
And queens mock me, and think I am grand, but no one sees
Me stand in the shadows, unless I destroy entire empires…
My mother thought it was a bad idea, not a good idea, that ideas
Shouldn’t be put in society, shouldn’t be spoken of in classrooms.
Sometimes, even the walls are dim, and sometimes I can hear them.