Roberto Carlos Garcia


“I cannot write anything”
                            —Czeslaw Milosz

I despair for the world,
Its hunger, violence, & corruption—
I’m suffocating.

Pitiless noise drowning out pleas,
Poetry weakens &
I cannot write.

Americans kill, kill, kill.
Activists jailed for their troubles
Poetry wants images, metaphors—

I refuse the reader redemption,
I tell it miserably & you will taste iron in the blood,
I drag you &
I cannot write.

Crack hiss of drones lurking in the skies,
The fathers of dead children don’t cry, they wail.
I defy poetry. I rant.

Poetry misfires.
I want bullet wounds, bomb blasts, & tears on the page,
Read this & howl with me,

Forsake everything,
Here is your crown of thorns—
A starving child like an open gash

Faces turn from on the street.
The heart is a mirror, look inside,
what you see,
I cannot write.

Tremble—when bullets kill, ache at bloody protest.
The ignorant blot stars
They justify, conform, hate.

What is poetry that does not try to save nations or people? 

What are people who do not read such poetry?
Whatever poetry does—
I cannot write.