A poem is only non-violent
if its edge is dull. No roses
here at the razor wire frontier
of a future built with bones.
There are no butterflies
on the wire; your lover’s
pastoral visa is cancelled
no dreamscapes; only nightmares.
You can run to the lyric garden
but you can’t hide. They’ll come
for the lovers and poets
sure as Winston Smith.
Your MasterCard may save you
if your Empathy Bureau score
is zero. Just hunker down
in your luxury bunker.
I’ll spotlight the towers
build coffins and ladders
set my sights on the soul-
less and squeeze the trigger
with no more remorse
then you feel for the maid
and gardener you left behind.
— Mark Folse
A poem is only non-violent
About Me
Mark Folse is a provincial diarist and aspiring minor poet from New Orleans. His past blogging adventures included the Katina/Federal Flood blog wetbankguide on blogspot.com which David Simon told NY Magazine was one of three blogs that helped inform Treme, and Toulouse Street–Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans, which once outranked the Doobie Brothers on Google Search. His work has appeared in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, The New Delta Review, Metazen, New Laurel Review, Ellipsis, What We Know: New Orleans as Home, Please Forward, The Maple Leaf Rag IV, and A Howling in the Wires (which he co-edited).
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Well Bottom Blues 
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