An unrhymed Pindaric

“Either be wholly slaves or wholly free.”
-- John Dryden

I. Strophe**

Free verse, you are my original verse, my birth voice,
music of my inheritance, placenta full
of breath and heartbeats, my riotous word maps
shred of the rules of the patriarchy, the white
old world. Self reliance is All American, I say;
I say what I mean like daggers on blood stains, scientific
particularity, embellished with the subversive, diabolical
enjambment, a soothsayer and a liar, a sister assumed
in the interruption, a sister resolved
in the final line.

II. Antistrophe

But you can spin out in an open lot.
Who’s to say a sister can’t mark out her own
shape—skinny, fat, fit to be *******?
Who’s to say she can’t be obscure, obtuse, coquettish
with a song and dance or with raw, pickled reason?
There’s more to ****** than some two-faced
enjambs. There’s the rhetorics of ******* and assuming
you invented the knife. Can we just cut the game
of its gangrene?  Smelly history, politics,
and idolatry?

III. The Stand

I take back the music; I will sing badly in my parlor,
set a line with a waltz or a moon dance.
I refuse to relinquish my words to the tyranny of English.
I refuse to relinquish my words to the tyranny of me.
I take back all shapes (if they flatter me) and mathematics.
I take back the agenda nailed to the wall,
refusing to relinquish my self to the tired old generals
of either side. I take back the third waves of the entire sea
and shitbox and I take back the almighty decision
of which witch is which.

In the rituals
of the life of struggle,
they work the blue collar jobs
of their parents-
grilled cheese, fries,
a shitbox used car,
scratch tickets duds,
so many of no frills,
so many barely getting by.