Your fingers tapping on the desk must not
allow your tired mind to rest or slip
from strict attention to the rhythm. We
must always stay alert and hold the fort
against distraction, that voracious beast,
that thief that dwells in chaos. For the beat
cannot be broken. Tell, what others stay
as guards, defend the holy undertones –
the pump of blood, the creak of bones – or think
to question flow without the needed stops
of punctuation? All the world stands back
relaxes and gives up on language, speaks
and writes with shameful slack. They sacrifice
all purity for ease. And so? Now we
must overcompensate, stay steady in
devotion to this wretched state, this
type of worse pollution. Some of us have had
to mechanize – to shed what we once prized
in favor of the balance. No amount
of light can break through rhythm without rhyme.