Language Refuses Permission
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| Klara Kulikova for Unsplash |
LANGUAGE REFUSES PERMISSION
The poem enters the room without credentials,
ink on its hands, breath smelling of smoke and bread.
Politics is already there—
all elbows and podiums, a mouth full of promises,
papers shuffling like nervous birds.
They recognize each other immediately–
ancient enemies who share a bloodline.
Poetry speaks in wounds and weather.
Politics answers in numbers, borders, terms of service.
Between them, the air thickens.
A metaphor is mistaken for a threat.
A statistic begins to cry.
Someone bangs a gavel and calls it order,
as if order has ever survived a true sentence.
The poem insists on the body—
the mouth without food, the back bent at work,
the child learning the sound of fear.
Politics tries to stand between the poem and the crowd,
but the crowd has already memorized the line.
When they collide, sparks fly off language itself.
Words fracture: freedom bleeds, people multiply,
justice refuses to sit still.
By nightfall, the poem is bruised but breathing,
passed hand to hand like contraband fire.
Politics wipes its brow, changed despite itself,
haunted by an image it cannot legislate away.
Somewhere, a reader feels a sentence land
like a fist, like a kiss, like a door kicked open—
and the collision continues,
not finished, not resolved,
but alive, speaking
and dangerous.
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