JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

Connected as we are

your blood pours through our arteries

your pain our pain, your song our power

 

Was it always like this?

 

Once walls were barriers

over mountains no words flew

and only pigeons carried post to kings and troops

 

We lived within the confines of our walls,

our hamlets.  We’d only recently denied

the rumor that the world is round

 

Beyond the flatness, monsters roamed

and all those distant them and others

wild imaginings, legends, or plainly

did not exist at all

 

And is it really preferable.  This closeness,

this looking glass, this translation,

your faces that flash across our screens?

 

Without you we could wake into our morning

sun shining bright as ever, food on our table

heartbeats tight inside our breasts, your voices

cut off, silenced, so easy to pretend that

you’re not there

 

Until over mountains

under ground

washed by oceans

comes a great sound

of children crying, millions plunged

into the dark

our dark, our children, our blood

 

Hear now the drum beat.  Prepare the ark.