poem in which i am an activist 

i don't consider myself an activist.
i do like the idea of glory & revolution
but i was built for aftermaths. my lungs
are spore sewers. i come from a long line
of antique talkers. in my childhood home
a telephone from the early 1900s hung on 
the wall. i would sometimes listen to
the earpiece & hear the ghosts arguing
about the same hungers we have. in the backyard, my father
plants tomatoes & lets them grow wild
& untended. each fruit, a red giant.
when they all yield, we will be picking for days. 
i am so tired of wrestling with
the finger-eating machine. instead, i want
to build gills like mushroom folds. 
i see government buildings & i dream
of making them greenhouses. all laws are outlived
by the soil. if i was an activist, i wouldn't
last very long. i was burn bright. maybe wrap
a senator's house in a takeout bag & carry it
to the burning town in the mountains. 
i would not be bold enough to throw a shoe
at a governor but if i did, i would choose
my old stripper heels. maybe, if there were
enough of us, we would turn into horses
& trample all of their genocide stations. i do not want
to spend any more of our precious sun
trying to convince that which was designed 
to kill me, to keep me. so often i feel like
a throat lozenge in the mouth of another 
evil man digging holes for fence posts.
i buy a pocketknife & discover it is useful
as a garden spade. in the front yard, the ferns
are unfurling their fists. i wonder what it is
that they reach for. i should probably open
my hands too. catch something. not a star,
maybe just a petal from the peach tree who might,
if the world is real enough this year, bear fruit.