Protest

Or: "Not Every Lattè Is Some Classist Sin"

I am not your hero. 

I am not your socialist saviour, 

Or wordsmith soldier sent to summon the disillusioned 

To rise and protest (yet again) 

Of all those things the capitalists invented. 

I am not your hero. 

I am not your populist poet 

Your salt-(on wounds)-of-the-earth 

Man of the people, placing bets 

That they're on history's good side, this time. 

I am not your hero. 

I am not the coarse-tongued bard 

Cursing freely in verse to those mad 

At anyone other than the downtrodden 

For where comfort lives, an enemy lies. 

I am not your hero. 

I am not some suffering soul; 

Neither pitiful pain inflicted in yesteryear, 

Nor in queer-qualified fury at everything and

Anyone swimming down the mainstream.

I am not your hero. 

Let those who've caught the people's pulse 

Lead battle cries against landlords and laws, 

My muses dwell not within news of this day, 

But to name my own path, and know which way I came, 

I am not your poet; 

Instead, I am my own.