Pens & Swords & Stuff by Jimmy Andrex & the Bible of Dreams

Can poetry change the world?
My massacre-denouncing couplets in verse can halt a bullet
Like the paper it’s not written on, however well-rehearsed.
A villanelle of rage will always struggle to engage
People’s online drip-fed death disguised as freedom and change
On a planet-sapping phone people trust more than God;
Where AI memes and retouched scenes
And snaps from fake pasts with funeral-green grass
Persuade us existence has all gone sour
As we’ve gone to seed.

Can poetry change anything?

And it’s all the fault of some trans person round the corner, apparently,
Though all they seem to do is watch old films and grieve;
We’ve been browbeaten to believe they’re a threat to our kids,
Who are 29 and 33.
And the comments complain You can’t say things,
You can’t say things, you can’t say these things you’re saying now,
Except, of course, you are.
Chatbot rants learned off pat about pensioners perishing decades ago
As if it’s happening now: Is this how dementia comes about?
Or is this how destroyers divide us?

Can poetry change anything?

Well, what if a well-turned word or phrase, made from something we once read
Could get in someone else’s head and sneak downstream, like the feeblest twig,
Then persist till the irritated city, where the blessed seem bitter
Sneak through a door to prevent someone memorising the recipe for misery,
And spur them to sing while the dawn’s still dark disguised.

Though no-one takes much notice of words, especially this,
What if this coalesced, in a real place and time,
Became part of something, walked right off the map,and wandered away from hatred occasioned by retouched rage and finally decided to try and stop living
Off kebabs and conspiracies?