#title Poetry #author Various Authors #SORTauthors Various Authors; #date 2016 #source [[https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/395-winter-2016-50^th-anniversary/poetry]] #lang en #pubdate 2016-03-09 #notes Fifth Estate #395, Winter 2016 — 50^th Anniversary *** Barbed-Wire One day in the prison yard, the resident grey cat chased heedlessly A bird, who’d landed on the roof, all enclosed with steely swirls And slipping through the curling razor wire, stalked Until it caught her leg and stopping Shaking as it sliced her paw...open...raw The sharp barbs cutting fur and muscle, white and wounded to the bone Blood dripping down the eves, yowling And the bird forgotten, gone Took so long a summer healing, that we wondered If the fabled nine were used and done But she survived and still sleeps the afternoon in sun, these days Listening to the radio this morning in my cell, ear to the wind and the wild world outside All walls and razor wire, comes the rolling distant thunder Of masses on the move, rivers of refugees Each person fleeing worse and much worse behind them Where everywhere is war And those few wealthy nations, crossed arms close their gates Spew tear gas and water cannons, raise up more walls And I cannot help but wonder As the thousands push their way through daily Who will be cut, and who will bleed And who will get away To survive this and find the sun again Somewhere, someday —Marius Mason Carswell Federal Prison, Fort Worth, Texas *** Endless rage I have needed my anger often enough. It saved me from rape, gave me that red roar of energy that sent me out of bad beds. Let me shed insults like a dog shaking off drops of rain. But anger can poison with a slow leak into the blood. Anger can turn on the nearest, the weak, the ones who can’t retaliate. Fume against anyone whose likeness you can’t find in your mirror. The unlike, those who have less and thus must be less and should be and have less and occupy less space and live less. Anger swells its tumor pressing on the brain; it wants to harden into a bullet. We are a dangerous people who plunge into war after war, who hand out automatic weapons like tax rebates, who express shock when angry men do exactly what they want and kill and kill and kill. —Marge Piercy *** The Fit One thing changes with another. And so on. The fit may fail you. The world falls down but not all the way —Rick London