Angry, like casting black magic

I want to be free
Oh
How this one still aches
The pain of wanting to be free
Really free
Impossibly free
Only controlled by those things I choose to control me.

Violence protects the food from the hungry.

Not just the freedom granted by having enough
Or the freedom that emerges from well-run institutions
The freedom to know I wasn’t being lied to
Swindled
Made a murderer
The freedom to be hated
To fight safely
The freedom of moral suasion being effective.

The moral argument against billionaires is nucleus tight.

To smoke without triggering addiction
Committing slow suicide
Or
Supporting an evil corporation
Non-profit cigarettes not nicotine delivery systems
With a portion of each of my purchases
Tucked away
Towards my lung replacement surgery.

The profit motive is a collapsing cage.

I want to be free
Free to do the right thing
First
And
Fight for my crumbs second
Free to get the help I need
So I can give the help only I can give
Free to be able to imagine
And believe
Free to have faith
That the future will be better
The freedom to make that future
Together.

Counter-revolutionary forces control food prices
Until they don’t.

Freedom screams in me
Freedom screams in the souls of all
Moral people
Freedom screams in the bellies of the poor
None of us want total freedom
All of us want the freedom to choose
To voluntarily submit to authority.

Anarchism is so beautiful it is still a bogeyman.

Freedom is being in love with the rules
Celebrating paying taxes
And
Easily putting love first.

I love you
Though it can be very hard.

Calm, tired, sure

All the language is exhausted
Now
At a moment of real crisis
All the language we have to describe crises
Is used up
On crises far less dangerous
Than this one
So the enormity of the danger that civilization is in
This year
Can’t be communicated
Because language has been debased
For political advantage
And
That sweet sweet profit.

Food is too expensive
Capital F Food is too expensive
Food prices are causing demand destruction
Does that sound calamitous?
Simultaneous failures in several of the world’s
Breadbaskets
Due to war and man-made climate disasters
Have caused prices to rise enough
People are dying
That!
Two years ago there was enough food
There isn’t anymore
And
Like everything else
The future will be worse
Civilization teeters
The price of food pushing it over the edge with
Boiling ferocity
And we will remember this year fondly.

Is this an emergency?
A problem?
A crisis?
An emergency crisis?
A super duper emergency?
We can’t grasp it
Not only because we don’t share facts
But because the words we need have been stolen from us.

Civilization is constantly teetering
It might be a feature
War is normal
Historically speaking
And overusing our environment to exhaustion
Has a long and hallowed pedigree
But power is based on the ability to control the food supply
Power is what enforces civilization
When there is no food to dole out
To make people pay for
Well
Some Marxists think that is a prerequisite for revolution.

Must we find hope in starvation?

I love you.

Persuasive, energetic, crescendo

Being changed by resignation
Into who I think I always wanted to be
I earned this resignation
After all
Worked hard to get away from it
Fought it off for years
Hard
Desperately
Skillfully
With the help of professionals
But this resignation
Was building a homestead
Before I knew what it was.

Ask again and again
What is possible
What is required
What is desired
And see the contours of resignation’s genius
Of the
Will
It has
How much it loves you and wants you to be
Just fine
Thank you very much.

Depressed people are more realistic in their evaluations of themselves and others because of the total absence of rose colour
This resignation
Seems to
Find humour in outcomes
There is no answer
Just a bunch of hilarious jokes.

Demanding the impossible because it was right
Was
Is
Just like everything else coming out of the mouth of
Moral philosophers
Disconnected from reality.

We must accept that all humans are
Fragile
Weak
And
Fallible
That these are good traits
They bring us together
But also
Doom us
Well maybe not
Maybe
But maybe not
It sure seems that the survival of the human race depends on
The impossible
Becoming ordinary
But maybe not
And
Besides
If we maintain that we need optimism
We will never develop the skills we need
To keep fighting for the length of time it will take
To
Ya know.

She’s built a small grey hut
In that plain
Caulked with dark grey mud
Warm fire and unique furniture
The place is a respite
And resignation herself a smiling faced lover
That tells me how to
See
Choose
Care
In a way that holds the powerful and rich to account
For their sins
Do you really want to save them
She asks with a knowing smile
If I save myself they will be saved
He responds with his last line of defence
And is that right my moral philosopher
He laughs
No
No it is not
Give up your delusion that you have any meaningful control and come read by the fire
But the world
The world can go get fucked
And his smile sung with hope for the world
Indeed
As he followed her threadbare dress inside.

The richest billion are all covered in blood
But billionaires
Live in a leaky bubble continuously filled with fresh blood
Billionaires are the problem
Not my resignation.

I love you.

Bob Preece is an independent poet, novelist, and screenwriter based in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. His commentary has appeared in The Globe and Mail, and he is the author of the novels 2030 and Dea Helps alongside more than a dozen self-published collections of poetry. He lives with his Goldendoodle, Hunter.