This is not a poem for J.A.

I need my space

The t-shirt with stars says

While the malls burn all around

The barricades being built

Until they are one with violence

The night comes it is all

They have left after

The world has ended again

This is not a poem

For John Ashbery who

Killed the subject quietly

With the kitsch of elites

We would imitate until

Our actual voices fade

Or the spaces a public didn’t make
Are finally recognized.