Resistance / An Argument For Hope

Two poems by Albert Lin

Resistance

A weed grows in a lawn.

It pops up above the grass,

Doing nothing but existing in defiance of order,

Contradicting the neat stories of the status quo.

And for that, the punishment is death.

It’s resistant to every form of chemical control,

Every compound made from the excess stocks of agent orange

Repurposed to wage war on a local scale when there was a lull internationally.

So sharp blades slice through its neck instead,

And through every tall poppy near it.

Every blade of grass is taught a lesson that cannot be followed.

Because what is the nature of existence if not to change and grow?

That’s the thing about weeds.

They’re not bad plants,

They’re just good at growing in places where things are too uniform,

Good at sprouting in places that need change.

They are nature’s response to a strangled system with needs unmet.

You can kill them over and over and new ones will still grow.

They keep growing because things are still wrong,

Regardless how much atrazine or glyphosate or trimethylamine is sprayed upon their bodies.

They are not the problem.

Resistance does not exist in a vacuum,

It is a response.

An Argument For Hope

Hope is often one of the first things to be discarded.

Be realistic, they say.

Be pragmatic.

Stop looking just because it is harder to find than before.

Settle.

Give in to the anger and grief and forfeit a part of your humanity.

Forget a vision of the future to blindly survive the now

And wake up one day wondering when the world turned grey.

As if hope is not the planting of seeds in your soul.

You are a forest,

And you can only burn for so long before the landscape is nothing but ash.

Even so life can and will return.

Hope is not delusion,

It is faith.

It is trust and growth and endless possibilities.

It is denying the easy way out.

And even if it ends in failure,

Even if hope is nothing more than a swan song

Then at least you sang.

At least you looked at the world and understood that it could be better.

Fight under the banner of hope.

Fight for quiet nights with friends

And the joy of growing old

And sunsets.

There is more to life than pain and suffering.

Do not let trauma be the only legacy you leave behind.

Pick up hope and do not let go.

It’s sturdier than you’d imagine.