Lewis Warsh
WHAT HAPPENS
What happens when the rights of people
are repressed? What happens when your
best instincts are smothered, locked
in a vise? What do you do when you can't
reach out & touch someone,
in public or in private,
there's a curfew tonight don't stay
out too late. Love turns to anger
& hatred when you're not allowed to
feel anything, when all you can do is
walk around like a stone. & anger
leads to violence, that’s a common fact,
when your feelings have been torn from your
heart & trampled upon, till they turn to dust.
Repression leads to anger, everyone knows
about that. You can't walk around with
your hat in your hands, bowing obsequiously
to mannequins wearing epaulets or cower
in a gloomy corridor while the bonfires burn
in the night. Some wild dogs might be crying
on the horizon, who knows? You're alone
in your room with your repressed heart,
skulking down an alley like an old bag of bones.
Lewis Warsh (1944-2020) was a writer, editor, visual artist, educator, and the author of over thirty volumes of poetry, fiction, and autobiography, including the posthumous poetry collection Elixir (2022) and the 50th anniversary reissue of his translation of Robert Desnos’ Night of Loveless Nights (2023). He was co-founder with Bernadette Mayer of United Artists Magazine and Books, and co-founder and editor with Anne Waldman of Angel Hair Books and Magazine. He was the Director of Long Island University’s MFA Program in Creative Writing (2007-13). For a full bibliography and selected artwork, go to www.lewiswarsh.com. His papers are in The New York Public Library’s Berg Collection https://archives.nypl.org/brg/35928.
This poem was previously published in Long News: In the Short Century, Issue #3, 1992. Used with permission of The Estate of Lewis Warsh
