splinters

of space-time . a cartographic

and chronologic impulse with no edge

. a horizon that retreats as we pursue it

. everyone who knows the past

, is a library , is a most dangerous place

. the year after I was born

, Allen Ginsberg debuted Howl

at the now famous 1955 Six Gallery reading

, was a perfect image of protest

stepping over the hypocritical debris

of Suburbia’s nuclear family

. what now can we say

to comfort the single , Black mother

who weeps inconsolably 

in the wake of the loss too large

to be held in the words

she struggles to voice . the harder we grasp

, the deeper we fall down . we euphemize 

our sins while missiles spear shrapnel

elsewhere , over there and invisible

. our U . S . of ignorance , fear , bigotry

, violence and greed , despite

the folksinger whose guitar three-corded

: this machine kills fascists

. in an era of melting glaciers

, of weeping , sheared-salt tidal surges

, the climate-warmed artic ice

, out and out and out

in incremental ocean rise . the ocean fish

plastic-bloated , and burst to death

. the shit flowed unfiltered from water pipes

, and evening news awash

with flash flood stories

, and our solutions feigned as genuine

, albeit transparently marginal . the threats

we foresee , but distort , deny , are

distracted by : we still have time . and all

that is deemed improbable 

, crouching in clearly favorable odds .   

henry 7. reneau, jr. writes words of conflagration to awaken the world ablaze, an inferno of free verse illuminated by his affinity for disobedience & a barbwired conviction that prequels the spontaneous combustion that blazes from his heart—a discharged bullet that commits a felony every day, exploding through change is gonna come to implement the fire next time. He is the author of the poetry collection, freedomland blues (Transcendent Zero Press.) His work is published in Superstition Review, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Notre Dame Review; Punt Volat; The Ana and Oyster River Pages.