like this place, i am a relic:
irrelevant in a world of 
shouting and shooting --
there are no armies 
led by poets, and 
no one ever
has their
minds
changed
anymore, we
continue to turn
up the volume, while 
ever tuning out opposing
voices - or better yet, we
caricature them as something 
other than we know they intend 
to be - after all, humor is
the universal solvent, and
our enemies are certainly
fair game to whatever
tools we may see fit
to use, given the
high stakes that
are involved -
at any rate:
in storage
we keep
that
which we
hold to be
so dear that
we dare not use
it publicly, or even
privately - things we 
treasure to such a degree
that we never touch them at
all - like our ideals, which we
keep safely in storage, so we
can point to them in times
of crisis and not actually
use them or anything,
for we might break
them if we were
to anything
that rash