Inspiration

I went to the Book Expo America last year and received a ton of books, some I am still getting around to reading. One of those books is a poem, titled To the Barricades, by Stephen Collins. I am only a few pages in but I am loving every second of it. My favorite stanza is the opening stanza, which is written as a letter:

Dear Common
                after Gerald Raunig's Art and Revolution

I had thought this was
Outside the barricades
No street in time
But a space left
Uneven and cluttered
With broken ballot boxes
Like a poem with
Everything in it so
Nothing you write
Isn't it and
Nothing you write is
But everywhere your
Hand over the page
Is shadowed by
Another hand taking
Up what you've written
Down and finding the
Spatiotemporal scale
At which it
Makes the most sense

I've been reading this over for days and loving every line of it.

No Man's Land

I heard screams and crying all night
Their tears left on car windows
It chills me,
This windless cold
I don't think my bones
Will ever remember warmth

Empty streets
Only last night's ghosts
Departing
As that ball of fire
Stretches high,
Melts them away
Leaving these frosty puddles
littering the sidewalk

Where are all the old people
playing chess,
All the old people
usually on the benches?
I am
Before their time.

July 4

Steel wool
Dragged across my skin
Ripping off a layer

Thinking about our last words
I bite my tongue

Every chain link
Digging in
Bleeding me out

I pound away
at the metal
Sparks fly
Fragments everywhere

I stop
Sweating, spent.

I will let
The shower
The change of seasons
The kindness of strangers
Return me to me

Kitchen surface tops
Will collect dust
Without your condescending eye
I am no longer
Bound to a broom
The apron
Permanently untied

I can wear my highest shoes
Without fear
Of making you little,
You do that fine
By yourself.