The Waste Land ____ AKSHR

The Waste Land

 

Poets aren't very useful

Because they aren't consumeful or produceful.

And when they don't have something to say,

They will say it for the money or the praise.

Without context, without an interrogative,

Or a modicum of irony to break the ice,

They will repeat what people want to hear:

The poetry of the past is dead.

And I won't get through this day alive.

I can only think of things that are unsaid. 

Of words that remained in my head 

and were never said out loud;

Of thoughts that rose and fell, again and again;

Of all of those times I didn't speak up 

right away—or at all.

____ AKSHR