BUILDING YOUR DEFENSE
Matt Hart
Here’s what you’ll need:
forests for trees and
mountains for dirt and
mountains for rocks and
mountains for goats,
since goats are the best
defense against the offense
of wild weeds and overgrown grass
Maybe you already have all of this
If you do, great, but I know for a fact
that you don’t And also,
you don’t have a lawnmower You had one
but now you don’t and why you don’t
is too boring to get into, but
that’s why you need the goats
You also need big round gaseous spheres
of bright green money floating in the sky
That way whenever you need to pay
for any of the expenses associated
with building your defense,
you will have the cash on hand
and won’t need to put it
on a credit card Credit cards
are evil They make you lazy
and defenseless They make you think,
“Why do all this work grabbing
at the money planets in the sky
when I can just buy everything on credit
at a low introductory rate and worry about it
later” Thus, credit cards make you weak
and eventually they make you weep
Believe it Also, for your defense
you will need a Deathstar like the one
Luke Skywalker so recklessly destroyed
in Star Wars The force was with him,
but also he got really lucky A lot
of the other X-wing fighter pilots were not
so lucky Lucky for you, however,
there are no more X-wing fighter pilots
and no more Jedis, so your Deathstar
will keep you safe and warm
and walled off from pretty much everybody
And yeah, a Deathstar is a lot of fire power for one person
But thanks to the 2nd Amendment
you have the right to build a Deathstar
and to use it, if you must, to stand your ground
against whatever you’re afraid of,
which, let’s face it, is pretty much everything
It’s amazing you’re still with us
given the myriad threats you face
on a daily basis For example,
when you’re out with friends at Hooters
eating jalapeno poppers—or even herding
your goats beneath your glowing clouds of money—
you can pretty much expect you’ll be attacked
or possessed or overshadowed
by somebody But once you have a Deathstar
you’ll never need to worry Bad guys
are deterred by Deathstars
and also other visible and invisible threats
to their coherence With your defense
up and running, they’ll stick to their guns—
and leave you to your Wonder-
white truck nuts in peace So get to work now
defending your freedom You’ll need the forests
and the goats, etc But you’ll really need that Deathstar
Like magic, your fair share can be the whole pie
Your conspiracy theories depend on it
Matt Hart is the author of nine books of poems, including most recently Everything Breaking/for Good and The Obliterations. Additionally, his poems, reviews, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous print and online journals, including Big Bell, Columbia Poetry Review, Harvard Review, jubilat, Lungfull!, Mississippi Review, POETRY, and Waxwing, among others. His awards include a Pushcart Prize, a grant from The Shifting Foundation, and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He was a co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety from 1993-2019. Currently, he lives in Cincinnati where he teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and plays in the band NEVERNEW.