Poetics & the Crisis of This Moment

Poetic Justice

On the day of the darkening
sun, a great voice shall
rise within you,
crying out:

Now!

Now!

Put down your weapons
and take up the battle
to satisfy your untended soul!

Oh god. Oh goddess.

It’s time to come to terms
with the terribly honest thing
to which you are willing
to sacrifice yourself.

It will be a never before
seen thing because
you have been avoiding
it all your life.

It’ll be dangerous,
and beautiful,
alluring and
terrifying.

Tread carefully,
because dependable things
are about to fall apart.

Be mind full.

The words you are about
to unleash are enlivened
and will resist your
efforts to tame them.

Listen up!

The great questions
are the force to be
reckoned with:

Whose child are you?
What have you born into this world?
What have you broken?
Who have you held in their brokenness?
What have you given permission to?
Who have you set free?

Who knows you as a great lover?

Why do you love?

That one is worth repeating:

Why do you love?

Answer truthfully.

Divest from ignorance!
Divest from arrogance!

You are not entitled
to any word other
than human.

To say the truth is strange,
is to admit that you are strangers.
To say the truth is cruel,
is to say that liberation is cruel.

You know what is right.

Do it!

That is being your best.
That is the only way.
Why else would this world
have invited you to be here?

As long as you are in good spirits,
you can trust in justice.
It is righteousness.
It is equity.

At its roots, by definition,
it is the sacred way.

Justice is the sacred way.
Why else would the poets
narrate such a seemingly
treacherous path?

So, yes, with these words
I pray that there may
soon come a day that,

by some twist of fate,

you find yourself knee-deep
in ash, praising the forces
of destruction.

That’ll be the day
you finally know that
you’ve been blessed.

There will be nothing
left to do, other than
to gather up the good
people and take them
with you.

– Jamie K. Reaser