The Poetry of Mark Daniel Milbocker 
I Defy

I defy the muse to call me old and tired
and rigid in my aesthetic calculations
perhaps self-indulgent in my curmudgeonity
I swooped passed ennui into jaded and cynical
only to leap off into the misanthropic
preferring the quietness of flowers and tea
to the caterwauling of bears and wolves
and the incessant mountain climbing of the
sky-curious whose mouths spill Tibetan granola
as they smile into their Instagram feeds
I pay my taxes but I won't buy your bridges or
patriotisms or shameless theocracies that
eat children for breakfast and make modest
proposals of our enslavement into the camps
and callings to round up the divergents into
leper colonies so our children may be safe to
genuflect your anthem and fawn over your
fragile masculinity and street smart lingo
as they are fed fads and a steady drip of
legal dogmas to deaden and enthrall and
call it freedom while cocking the pistol
against our better selves.
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