Time For A Change

Stop Liking what I’m saying; stop Liking
what your friend’s friend posts, stop
Retweeting your celebrity crush like
they give a fuck, stop Re-blogging
and hearting and noting and tumbling
or sticking things to a non-existent wall

just stop.
Stop the rot of unblinking eyes
and endless clicking fingers. Stop
sitting there in your squeaky chair
by the window with the shades down;
stop being an audience in your own damn life
stop slaving after someone else’s words
following their every ghostly footstep—

start taking your own steps—
don’t let Armstrong do it for you, fucking leap
for the stars. Start writing your own words,
start singing your own songs, don’t just click
and sit and stare down at your phone screen
while birds paint the sky with their wings
and the wind composes poetry on their backs.

And if your fingers are going to be stuck
on keypads for the rest of your life, make
it matter —share your life, share your everything
capture those birds and that poetry in words
and dance and song and art and translate
your heartbeat’s morse-code into a language
only your loved ones can understand
and then more—just make it yours.

There’s nothing wrong with inspiration,
nothing wrong with highlighting the sparks
of other ideas so long as your own blazes
like the sun beside them and you show us
how and why those embers fuelled your fire
so high and so wide it obliterated the night.
Take back the night—don’t just sweat
on your couch while the memory of stars
gleam on rain-slicked streets waiting,
just waiting for your bare feet

to drum across the asphalt
and broadcast your joy into the clouds.
Don’t just bitch and moan and laze
when your bones ache to create,
to stitch patchwork pieces into collages
of the universe, of your universe and others
colliding and the smile of a little girl watching
it happen. Don’t just be sad
when you read about awful things
when you see cruelty dished out in ocean-loads
and you feel like kindness is drying up

don’t just click on a link, don’t just tell others
don’t just share — ACT. Even if it’s just a line,
or poem or scribble on canvas, even if it’s a letter
you never send, even if it’s to weep for an hour—
do something. Let it take root in your chest
and flower on your tongue, let it inspire you
to create, to move, to stand up and shout
until your voice cracks and the window breaks
and the birds fall in a feather storm
to join the chorus.

Right now crickets are creaking in the street
and the road is exhaling & inhaling cars
in gusting breaths while the walkway lights
beep and clouds cover the skeleton of the sky
hiding the bright nerves of the universe’s mind
but there is a cool breeze floating through
the window and a dozen lamps in a dozen
other windows and a dozen other streets
looking back at me while I pour my hope
onto this page, onto your page

and every other fucking page in existence:
I will not sit still.
I will not be silent.
I will not hate.
I will not discriminate.
I will not ape –

I will create.