Food Stamps Poem by Rhys Owens

when i used to have to send letters to the editor
from charleville-mezieres,
i used to use stamps with pictures of Louis Pasteur on them.
in the united states, i've been sending out manuscripts,
with stamps that have Buzz Lightyear on them.
i feel reflected in my infinite culture.

to change the world:
i don't want to change the
world,
or culture;
i wrote.

the world of culture is the law.

it's nothing but space.
the outlaw moves through nothing but space
on all sides and in all areas
of life.

space all around.
i don't want to remove the space i need to move around in.
but it's possible, is what i wrote, if i explode
to break the very symmetry that survives as space;
it's theoretically possible, another wrote;
all i need to do is explode.

to find another food
for the food of the gods.
to find another god;
a one that's not the state.

you kill those gods,
you hang them and burn them.
because these gods are only men.

we are only men;
you,
silver-tongues with plastic toys,
are something else.

i write to stop playing with your toys.
to find another game;
it's when we break the rules-
while playing with 'your' toys...
but we're playing another game.

it's only when you stop and stare,
with your holier discontent,
that it turns into a game of you.

you give the hand when you feed;
but it's never your own.
you don't play war games,
you don't offer your table,
your food, your money...
you offer that of those that have little...
and for that they hate us.

i've been around a long, long year,
before the junkies, before the settlers,
before the indians:
i want the Romantic fallen angels and the mad
to transform their demons into dancing springs
of spirit.

i am no longer myself.
i've been so many others,
there's no one left to be.

i need enough space to be myself.
and, somewhere
there is a flower on a star,
waiting to see herself.
why do we send letters in space?

we haven't enough to eat?