Reparation Fixation

Twist a knob
to power ‘ON’.

 

Spin a wheel
to charge the field.

 

Press any key
to boot from CD.

 

Flash instruction
on electronic conduction.

 

Shifting space for partitions
like crop rotations.

 

Slash and burn technique,
rewrite the field of wheat.

 

Seeds to stalk instantaneously.

 

Wind-blown seeds from the neighbor’s field
sprout stringy and fibrous, reducing my yield.

 

These vines and brambles sap their energy.
A never-ending task, cutting free with machete.

 

As I tend to one plot, my focus away from the money crop,
The neighbor’s got it in his head, that his weeds make it his homestead.

 

I return to find no cloudberry bushes, but a rock wall with no entrances.

 

It seems the person to whom it is attributed, cared not to his fruit, for it withered.
But rather, lacking any other purpose, appropriated what was free to begin with.

 

Machiavelli said, “Being unarmed causes one to be despised”,
So an open range attracts slavers to enclose and privatize.

 

Now nothing grows and the fields lay fallow, because to plant again is to till all plots.
But one conspicuous structure takes up the lot, imprisoned is that miraculous fruit I had wrought.

 

So a final question I pose to thee; how to use one’s energy:
Better to beat on the wall til a crack, and gain my previous crop back;
or to start anew with what I know to be better seeds to sprout and grow?

 

But the answer from you I needed not beckon,
because the truth, now and forever, is the second.