QUIET QUIT
Most of us
at the end
will quiet quit
will recognize
body
as mystery
a history
book we must
return
a requirement
a requisite
each line on our face
or hand a pink slip
a dance stamp
ultraviolet
allowing us
to be returned
to re-admit
body as thesis
exegesis
op. cit.
loc. cit.
to wit
an extra Jesus
at the core of it
body a tool and die
shop breaking
bit by bit
a Morse code
telegraph
dot dot
dit dit
even our clothes
refusing to fit
like sitting on
Clint Eastwood’s lawn
telling everyone
to git
saying what soldiers say
when they get shot
I’m hit
I’m hit
when all we want
is to get lit
like a funeral pyre
a fiery pit
a piece of shit
like the game is over
like tag
you’re it
—from Poets Respond
September 13, 2022
__________
John Hodgen: “Can’t hear that phrase without feeling as if we’re all taking another hit, one in a thousand pinpricks each day, not the ‘little death’ John Donne wrote about in describing sex, but more of a malaise, a sense that all of us, despite all that is partisan and which separates us, are united in this, sensing the end of things, society on the brink, democracy, and even the workplace, now a series of empty canyons with workers, spiritless, feeling alive in some other way, morphing into something else and yet dying a bit each day.”
