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Gabriel Aug 2020
With every resistance,
remember –
how everything was choked
back into your mouth
when you were a baby bird
and the barricades
were not yet burned.

When you,
with aching gaze
watch the Joan of Arc torches
purge their way
up the winding acres
of stolen wood;
call yourself to Dunsinane
and wait there.

***** up your own feathers
and try to fly –
strip yourself of ash;
pretend that your fragility
is a stepping stone
to becoming a phoenix.

Inhale smoke
and watch the revolution
burn beneath your broken body,
your flightless bones
crushed to mothers’ milk,
countless choking coughs
coming up; down again.

Sing;
drown out the inevitable,
and choke;
with beautiful sounds
of death drawing acid
up your cartilage;
revolutionaries flee
the barricades, the fire,
whilst you beg
for what you have lost
to be choked back into you again.
Something I wrote for a first year university creative writing class.
José Vaca Jul 2020
Refined white lies.
Increased hate crimes.
Blood spike death rise.
Black lives chastised.
Allies demonized.
**** ring enterprise.
Children traumatized.
Elites organize.
Information ostracized.
Revolution televised.
Oppressive systems capsize.
As we the people synchronize.
Through the day butterflies.
Though at night fire fly’s.
Colonizers vandalized.
Hate symbols pulverized.
Say no more, mobilize.
Dream no more, visualize.
Social justice normalized.
War and famine neutralized.
Empathy not sympathy.
Happiness not jealousy.
Peace and love, no room for hate.
Like bumble bees let’s cultivate.

Replacing sugar with honey.
Zachary Fetters Jul 2020
Oh, The Wonder of the youthful mind,
rooted in its ability to dream.
“Oh, what will I be, who will I become?”
Questions forever laid, like intricate brickwork,
in the mind of those young enough to believe.

What we fail to teach the almost-citizens
is how a simple 5-digit code of residence
is enough to crack these dreams
and cast them into the dustbin of adulthood.
“Why must it be this way?” they may plead.

What they must know is that even the monoliths
in their lives, the ones who they grapple to,
do not know for certain.
The veil of the mystery may be within reach,
but its solution does not lie beneath.

They may also learn that the figures of authority,
the ones we tout as representatives of this land,
are not working for their interests.
These are the unfortunate truths of the state.
The one they dream so fondly for.

It is our duty, our role, and our responsibility
to tell the future that their dreams are not bunk.
Forming a new horizon takes time,
takes bravery, and takes a hope for what could be.
“This life is MINE,” they must maintain.

With enough chants, upheaval, and formation,
the dreams of the child can be the realities of the old.
This, we do know for certain:
it may not occur in our time,
but it can occur in theirs.
K E Cummins Jul 2020
To be poor is to go back in time
I have eaten dandelions out of the backyard
And contemplated the guillotine
The revolution of a coin
Skittering to a stop.
There you go, bringing class into it again!
Everyone wants to be a revolutionary,
a hero, a martyr, or more.
Empty minds seeking an empty prize,
of fame and boundless glory.

Everyone wants to be a wiseman,
without searching for the wisdom.
Everyone wants to break free,
from their phony societal prison.

Everyone wants to be loaded,
without having to earn the dough.
A tax or two will surely do,
those ***** capitalists will eat crow!

Everyone wants to change the world,
without having to change themselves.
Everyone wants everything,
except to be ourselves.
Copyright Barry Pietrantonio
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