poem
Volume 35, Number 2

The Unpublished Struggle For Change

I have in my pocket symphonies found a dozen fragments of the meaning
Of Shelley’s sonnet to Wordsworth, that are as acclaimed as the autumn leaves. 
Same as Villon’s drifts or the neurotic fear of the fall, 
The melancholy rustle of what the bourgeoisie lamented
Is for us rabble a crumb of the broadest hope
That all could make a sound, 
Like there is no monopoly on a symbol. 
In the buried emotional cuneiforms is a message no consumer will ever see, 
Arguing for the beauty of a living literature. 
Blowing like a fist of dust
The commercial baggie fat with fame;
A glittering swirl through the deserts of accomplishment
Compared to genuine human connection. 
How many generations have had to betray their seeds leaving
Us shivering in the absence of all society, 
To feed the pointless grosses erected in service to the financial shadows 
Of an empty monument to your deeds. 
Extractions for the unsound foundations of a fraud of the world we now should have
Stand in their commanding hollowness as that imitation of genuine feeling in marketing
Mimics joy to sell us supplements made on our having been deprived. 
But we shall reject your unnatural booms
And rather drop with a gentle detachment, 
In piles humble as much as they’re everywhere. 
As much as a collective expression of the volumes of individuals 
Whose content is clear, 
As their desire for social revolution.


—A. Scott Buch