Note: A Cento, from the Latin word for “patchwork,” is a "collage poem"— an established poetic form composed entirely of lines from poems by other poets, borrowing them and re-arranging them to form a new, original piece.
One day, everyone will have always been against this,
But we were sleeping. I've been sleeping.
And I've been turning away from the truth I wanted not to face—
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
They say whenever you find yourself on the side
Of the majority, it is time to reform.
But our apparatniks will continue making
The usual squalid mess called History,
And I still don't know what for, don't matter anymore.
While the vines of emails that should have been meetings
And meetings that should have been emails swallow
Neural fibers earmarked for greater things,
When weakness postures and virtue falls,
We look for the sermon in the suicide.
Anyone that's making anything new only breaks something else.
And every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth.
Sooner or later that debt is paid,
By who? No truth-handler, you!
Bah! I deride your truth-handling abilities!
So here we are, trying to live inside, trying
To move inside, and I always thought that
It would make me smarter, but it's only
Made me harder, my heart thrown open wide.
Dying is easy, young man, living is harder.
What is good is difficult, and what is difficult is rare.
Last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
"Come celebrate with me that every day, something
Has tried to kill me and has failed."
But the wounds of generations, almost too deep to heal,
Scar the timeworn miracle, and make it seem surreal.
Only here can you at long last see light filter
Into the eyes of those whose pain you've failed to note
As they welcome you with love to reality.
You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.
I know you're tired, and you ain't sleeping well,
Uninspired, and likely mad as hell.
But wherever you are I hope the high road
Leads you home again to a world you want to live in.
From (in order of appearance) Omar El Akkad,Tony Gilroy, W. B. Yeats, Mark Twain, W.H. Auden, John Prine, the author, Joan Didion, Taylor Goldsmith, Craig Mazin, Bill Oakley & Josh Weinstein, Bill Berry & Peter Buck & Mike Mills & Michael Stipe, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Robert Farrar Capon, T.S. Eliot, Lucille Clifton, Linford Detweiler & Karin Bergquist, the author, Wendell Berry, Jason Isbell.
*poetry snaps, poetry snaps*