Crayon
I wonder how it is that
Dmitri Shostakovich was creative in a straitjacket
sneaking homages into his symphonies
but spending his life under Stalin’s eye.
But Stalin was a man;
we all knew he had an expiry date.
As for you, you pronounce no such date,
neither in English nor in French.
“With enough time, you can get used to
almost anything,” Ivan the Gorilla would say.
But he was just
a monkey in a cage with a crayon.
“The men they couldn’t hang
stepped up to the mic and sang,”
but nobody listens to song lyrics.
I don’t wear sunglasses day or night,
yet I am more abashed.
In a free and democratic society,
the public library is a place set apart:
the poor come for sanctuary, and
to improve their lots in life.
The public library is no place
to wait
for a hero to come.
It is
for learning how to be one.
Thank you for reading
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