For Anna, Against the Committee

I write empty, frivolous poetry,
Alien to all sound-minded people,

Permeated by the scent of decay
And pessimism, redolent of old

Rhetoric and old-fashioned nostalgia
For bourgeois salons and Akhmatova.

That’s ok, no one reads this anyway.
It is a mercy to be unimportant

To a species poisoned by the sacred
And the saints, by ideals and righteousness,

By the conviction someone’s convictions
Must be true, just, and the best convictions.

There’s no conviction hasn’t tasted blood.
And why? Kindness is kind, sweetness is sweet,

But our rules about kindness and sweetness,
Made to coordinate, honed to compete,

Are the undead we carry within us
That know what they want and know what they need,

Know the victories of meanings can be
Won only by teams, and teams need to eat.

I know I can’t avoid this completely—
I feel my surging biochemistry

When a side that I agree with prevails.
And when I compose my borrowed phrases,

Wrangling for arrangements unique to me,
Something deep inside my mind wants to win,

Wants someone to read this and believe me.
Believe me, I can taste it, I’m hungry,

And these meanings are hungry within me,
Which is why there’s also a part of me

That is relieved to be irrelevant,
Frivolous, and empty—what’s good in me.