Hidden Emotion

Phoenix Generation Riot

Drag your fingertips across

the ancient mahogany wood

of the china cabinet,

soft gray dust clinging to your skin.

Choose one of the

teacups with painted flowers

swirling over its ivory porcelain.  

Then,

slowly and carefully,

cup your hands around it,

And throw it to the ground.

Let the white shards

spiral across the floor!

Grind them into dust under your heel!

Rip the lace doilies from the wall,

and burn them,

let crimson flames

burn, crackle, and flicker! 

Dance upon the smoky ashes! 

Bleed technicolor

into the inky film

of the slick black-and-white photographs!

Destroy all semblance

to our unforgiving and ignorant past,

incite a riot!

Our strong voices,

our pounding hearts,

our marching footsteps,

will roar like an inferno,

suffocating the archaic terms

that bind our wrists. 

We are the generation that survived

War

Shootings

Hatred

Racism

Misogyny

Mental illness

Discrimination

Horror.

We are the Phoenix Generation, bright and bold, starting a revolutionary spark that will consume our society. 

You may have burnt us to ashes,
but now, we rise.