A Poet’s Obstacle-laden Path

Headlines shriek like torn sirens on wet pavement,
inkless and endless, flickered on glass altars,
where wars are swiped past with a thumb’s indifference
and grief is reduced to a buffering icon.

Each alert is a spark with no fire,
each crisis a headline already aging,
knowledge traded for speed,
context for spectacle.

The populace reads in gulps now, not breaths,
paragraphs drown before reaching the lungs.
Libraries become echo chambers for dust,
while wisdom starves behind locked attention spans.

Facts fracture into slogans,
thought thins to captions,
and compassion—once learned slowly—
is uninstalled for efficiency.

Poets walk the margins, branded indulgent,
their work dismissed as excess weight in a rush economy,
their careful listening mocked as delay.
Yet they persist, cupping language like water
in a city of thirst,
hearing music where others hear noise,
finding bones of meaning
in the refuse of the day.