Subversification

By Jeannette Cook

You may have heard that poetry

Makes nothing happen.

This is fake news.

Fellow poets, this is a call.

Not to arms, but pens.

In this day and age,

What choice do we have

But put our voice on the page

If this is our art.

In numbers we may be few,

But we are free

To speak our hearts.

By means of rhyme

And repetition, we affect

The human condition.

So let us engage in radical acts

Of iambic pentameter

Without parameter. Let us build

Not walls but stanzas, let our rule of law

Be scansion.

May our metaphors

Open doors. May we resist

With alliteration, may we persist

With subversification.

It goes without saying

We’ll make up our own words.

Like the best minds of all generations,

Let us write, undeterred.

For whether they are whispered or shouted,

Our poems must be heard.