Napowrimo 2022 Day 4

 Day 4

A prompt for  poem about prompts

Prompter

 

I’m always doubtful about the power

 of poetry to change,

but what if you could tell it to,

what if you could make it do,

what if you could nudge it

off the ledge and make it fly?

 

What if you martialled poetry,

conscripted it in all its teenage fury,

shrugging its sulky shoulders,

bussed it up to the lines to fight -

its form too weak for the muddy uniform just yet,

but here and there, some signs of killer instinct –

 

what if you showed it how to oil its gun,

then showed it how to slot the bullets in,

and taught it how to march and tread -

then told it the point of aiming to the place

the target would have been?

I’ve read poetry like that.

 

And when the poems grow bloodied,

when the paper rips and tears,

when the words get awfully jingoed

and the cutting words could hurt;

if the poem’s propaganda, what then,

when you’re on the wrong side of history?

 

You’ve seen it at the edges and the margins,

handwritten faint, and word of mouth,

liminal at first, incantatory, shy-

a moth and bird, a widow and a prayer,

a voice, a poem as resistance   -

just like that, electric and a spark,

 

the metaphor transcending,

it changes, and transforms-

and if it is a child, then it is learning,

and if it is a spell, it wards the dark,

and if it is a thing, it is no weapon;

and we suppose that anything is possible.