Have I run out of bullets or bullshit?
     All poets unknown except those of us
     known for going further than dissidents
     otherwise would in trampling rhetoric,
     like well-fed animals in a secret
     zoo, how else is history made if not

to last forever, sometimes changed but not
     ever severed, we eat what poisons us,
     hides of thick designer leather secret
     factions stitch together, we dissidents
     whose passion demands action, rhetoric
     attacked when under new regimes bullshit

builds, ancient tyrannies flourish, bullshit
     taking the noble place of courage, not
     taking out nobles but rewarding us
     for pouring out what must sound forced, secret
     choruses purged in this verse dissidents
     dirge, this potent cure for what rhetoric

inflicts, yet here I sit, no rhetoric
     more insidious than this world’s bullshit
     and what I spit’s doing more damage, not
     content to express unless what heals us
     plugs what I hemorrhage, it’s no secret
     that what my talent bleeds feeds dissidents,

and like them I need fuel so dissidents,
     with my hand retool what scrolls rhetoric
     has not consumed, tombs of truth where bullshit
     wishes its fungal roots could rot too, not
     unlike iron gall as it moves through us,
     tattooing vellum flesh with a secret:

that selling oneself is life’s great secret
     and making a killing’s what dissidents
     need not hide when faced with poor rhetoric,
     that believing manifests what bullshit
     tries to limit, so hand-over-fist’s not
     evil unless on its eve what ends us

     renders penniless libertines like us,
     for whom wealth is just food for dissidents,
     my words worth more when served with rhetoric.