Trolls lurching
from under Center Street Bridge,
spilling poison,
drunken pretense,
pretend literary nonsense
dripping from broken teeth.
Your voice rises—
hammer in hand—
standing on the gravel
of mediocrity,
defending the small,
the weak.
Silent like Steinbeck
in the Oklahoma dust,
watching small men roar,
he turned Charlie loose on them—
dog teeth
for cowardly throats.
Hemingway would have
tossed their typewriters
into the sea,
them in tow.
Bukowski punched the keyboard,
cursed the world,
then took them out back
and broke their jaws.
Shakespeare turned his feather quill
into a pin knife,
ready for the fools
who dared mock his genius.
Poe, with a mind dark
and macabre,
plotted their demise
with the precision
of a telltale heart.
And yet—
their attacks became fuel,
feeding the fire
of new art.
The trolls, unwitting muses,
crafted poetry
from their own venom.
They beg for chaos.
I gave them silence.