A thousand writers lay before me
Their thoughts contained in the jars
Of wood pulp, ink and glue.
Numerous thoughts lay before me…
Seneca, Livy, Horace
There in used copies at the bookstore.
Where are they sold now,
New, in those beautiful Penguin and Oxford bindings?
I don’t see them on the shelves at my local book store.
Rather, I get one more rejection letter in the mail
Because I don’t sell a detergent.
I don’t sell deodorant.
I don’t sell left or right politiks.
Soon, that large library will wane
And what will be put in its place
Is the cacophonous voices
Of Fox News Analysts,
CNN and MSNBC commentators,
Politicians and the few Celebrity intellectuals.
No serious works of philosophy, religion,
Art or political science.
A thousand voices,
All shut up by populist opinions.
Slowly, we deteriorate,
Until the Reichstag is performed by the almighty dollar.
It’s performed, because all ethics are “Too emotional.”
All philosophy is “Merely speculation.”
Technocratic, we burn our books with our own opinions.
They don’t sell, so are thrown into the flame.
I read the famous poets.
None of them wrote like me.
None with the modern story telling element—
The clear language and imagery,
The thematic elements of our modern fantasies.
Why I couldn’t be squeezed into that little space
On the bookshelf I saw,
Why, even though there are thousands of famous writers,
Some I have never even laid eyes upon,
Why cannot I be a part of this tradition?
Rather, we burn Seneca with Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck and Rachel Maddow;
Piers Morgan, Anderson Cooper and Milo Yiannopoulos;
We bury Pride and Prejudice with Stephen King, Stephanie Meyers
And George R. R. Martin; Fifty Shades of Gray, Hunger Games
And Divergent.
We praise poets like Ezra Pound—
Never reading the word salad of his
Which no man living can decipher;
I’m not even sure it’s meant to mean anything.
Then, of course, there is E. E. Cummings.
Garbage.
Does anyone read Wordsworth, Byron, Keats or Longfellow?
Essayists, of course, are college students
As Shane Dawson writes like he’s submitting a high school essay
And it prints and sells millions.
Emerson, Thoreau, Montaigne;—
Much more interesting… if they were given a shot.
Yet, I have to search the used book stores for Emerson and Montaigne.
They’re both slowly going out of fashion.
Both kindred souls…
Both so similar in their styles.
Plutarch I found, after some digging.
Herodotus tells me about Ancient Babylon,
Yet somehow the idiots online do not believe historians mentioned it.
A rich source of historical analysis,
Filled with Babylon, Persia, Media, Assyria, Egypt, Mesopotamia,
A Greek historian.
Yet… sadly there is online materials that would “prove”
These empires never existed.
Yale lectures that would even insinuate that they never did.
They find a “Sumerian” empire, and automatically say,
“Well there was no Babylon.”
Wholly forgetting that cultures call themselves by different names
Than other cultures. Germany in America is Deutschland in Germany.
Some idiot a long time from now might speciously believe
Germany never existed because they dug up German artifacts.
We’re dealing with a stupid generation
Because books aren’t read,
But podcasts are listened to.
There is not a touchstone to the past
Therefore, anything can be made up about it in the present.
And, my writing has touched the past.
But, they can find no place for it in that empty slot on the shelves.
Because, as it still remains,
I get rejected for having a racist character.
Wholly disposed, that the generation I was writing about
Was saturated by racism, and it was about their only sin most of them.
If we could excuse them of it, and wonder at how they were so far superior
To what we have today…
Perhaps we will have a more educated tomorrow
That doesn’t—as every movie seems to do—
Imprint their own values on the past.
Frankly, every movie you watch about history
Is ensconced in its present’s vices.
The best way to know what history was like
Was to read what was written at that time period.
Often, you’d find the most degenerate scoundrel
Had a heart of gold when compared to our modern man.
And that I find by reading history;
Watching history;
Experiencing history in what are called books.
But, today we’d like to invent it for ourselves
To shape it to our modern way of thinking.
Why can’t I be on those shelves
To represent modern man
As he truly is?
B. K. Neifert 