Not Now

This is not the time for enjambment or the perfect rhyme.

Do not spend even a minute searching for iambs that fit,

meters that remind readers of the way verse makers have

labored over the centuries. This is not the time either

to present new forms, to fish in traditions worldwide

to see how other poets penned their joys and sadness.

Throw all of that private labor into the drawer

and ask yourselves: what do we need now and how

can poets help? Urgent words, yes, rallying, rousing,

preaching words yes. So why not put such matter

into a sestina or a villanelle? Why not do what poets

are supposed to do according to the tradition

adopting forms, modifying them? I say to you

modify without shame. Write the words we need

to hear. Scream them into the ears of the five million

members of the National Rifle Association. But be

clever. Do not trespass their homes. Do not expose

yourself to gunfire. Scream through the computer.

Scream through the phone. Scream on the street

where the right to protest is still protected. Scream

in letters to judges at all levels of our broken down

society. Scream into a poem without worrying about

the finish or the beginning except that in every line,

in every pause you lament the innocents murdered

in two hundred and thirteen acts of mass killing

noted thus far in the domestic American calendar,

on May 27, 2022, so help us God.

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