We, The Fell

Oh wow! I haven’t had a decent fight
for years. But let’s not fight with brutal might,
the Net denies the real, and virtual war
is bland. Let’s fight with brutal words, the core
of words, in poetry, with lines of verse
in sonnet form. I challenge you, disperse
the crude, excite your skills, be rude with charm,
not teenage curse nor childish snap, but calm
and contemplative bile. The victor gets
the girl. The loser knows a fight well met
and lost is no disgrace. And if there’s fire,
if what we write has power, we’ll burn the pyre
of formulaic prejudice, the hell
of puritan ideal. We’ll be the fell.

This poem was published in the Autumn 2002 edition of Subverse.