The number one criticism from those that either resent the protests or (more likely) dismiss it with casual condescension is the movement’s failure to coalesce around a singular message and set of goals. While I do think it’s clear that Occupy’s main thrust is frustration with corporate influence, images of protesters championing a myriad of other, often unrelated, causes leaves the impression that the Occupy camp is a village market at which anyone can try to sell the liberal issue most important to them.

Furthermore, the protesters are often derided for not knowing what they’re talking about. Videos of conservative trolls interviewing the protest crowds very clearly demonstrate that, yes, Joe Protester often cannot discuss articulately or knowledgeably the issues for which he is spending weeks in a tent.

What many people seem to miss is that this has always been the dynamic of popular grass-roots movements. For some reason, we tend to apply a rose-tinted filter to the past, casting previous movements as ennobled demonstrations by philosopher-revolutionaries or, at least, the dignified and sober every-man. As if the unfortunate scent and difficult sanitation challenges facing the protesters on Wall Street are unique to their movement, we tend to scrub these sorts of unpleasant practicalities from our heroic narratives of past heroes of democracy.

To the contrary, popular movements are always characterized by 99% raw emotion and 1% thoughtful and focused leadership. The power of the people is not in its depth, but in it’s breadth. Of course the disgruntled, unemployed waitress isn’t going to have read a library of economic theory or be savvy on the endless stream of news, historical data, and white papers that need to be consumed (and remembered) to debate intelligently. And that’s okay. Not everyone has the time or talent to be a scholar. If someone were to carry a camera around an anti-tax protest in colonial America and put the town butcher on the spot with an arcane question about effective tax rates in the empire, I’m sure he would come off as bumbling.

For all of the praise given to ubiquitous recording devices and social media, I think we are also seeing the negative effects that these tools can have on the building of a popular movement. The great thing with these tools is that they give everyone a voice. The only problem is that they give everyone a voice. The anatomy of a successful movement is that of a small charismatic leadership channeling the frustration of many into a singular, compelling message. Most protesters only need invest their voices and passion; let those with the encyclopedic knowledge and rhetorical skills guide the talking points, engage the press, and create actionable goals that the rest can rally behind.

It’s a double edged sword: information and enthusiasm can be shared at a lightning pace, but a powerful message is lost in all the fly-by static. When everyone has a megaphone from which to communicate their own personal motivation for protesting, it makes it very hard for leaders and coherent goals to emerge. This presents a big marketing problem: the passion of the Occupy protesters has been very effectively communicated, but so has the ideological disjointedness and callowness of some parts of the movement. These have been a part of every movement in history, but now they are visible.

I, for one, remain optimistic and hope that the movement can find its voice. It is significant and admirable in itself that people are willing to take to the streets and express their frustrations, but in order not to waste the momentum and grass-roots enthusiasm of the last month, the protesters, regardless of the varying reasons that brought them to the streets, must throw their support behind leaders than can articulate a unified set of motivations and goals.

A trace of metaphor or alliteration
might be found to aid
invent a meaning that’s not here
(except the one you’ve made.)

Please don’t look at structure
ignore the rhyming scheme,
they are not significant
despite what it may seem.

A social commentary might be tempting
to pin on all the blame,
but I guarantee you
there is no meaning just the same.

Don’t bring this to discussion
and for goodness sakes don’t think!
The only thing in front of you
is a pattern of black ink.

So I pray you take to heart
all I have just said,
if you discover any meaning
remember – it’s only in your head.

On rigid grid-iron stage,
over million-boxed graph paper page,
frantic threads betray such perfect rails,
to wander and pursue their own erratic trails.

But by design or chance,
by tweaked coefficients or random circumstance,
two lines approach in converging slopes,
and meet in union of dreams and hopes.

Two lines run parallel in intersected romance,
growing together in winding, arithmetic dance.
Add to one and the other must grow,
to balance newly bound expression for values high and low.

Yet even in inking single line made bold by two,
multi-variable projections confound new points ahead;
and continuous functions turn to scatter plots,
of extrapolated romance,
or two lines shattered into mess of dots.

I survey two lines, met briefly then fled,
and wonder what equations describe a passion once binding, now dead;
or if this is chaotic system in which butterfly wings and forgotten handbags
map to fractal love instead.

Or even still that this is not a graph at all,
but a painting on some five-storied wall,
and I am looking on single brick within,
and splattered streaks are not formulas for love and what could have been,
but serendipitous mingling of paint that can mix to form
same brilliant shade again.

So then in dripping leaf and moss-covered stone,
Nature, in her silent, humble tone,
offers her pristine love in boundless supply,
that all require and none deny.

And in petty mimicry of the love She knows,
we may clip that love and offer rose
to lover, friend, or family,
and good children we should prove to be.

But deeper still can insight gain,
if analogy also can explain,
that pain that human love no immunity resolves,
but Nature’s love, in own self-seasonal decay, absolves.

For inevitable should autumn wax,
and in exploding colorful climax,
should green summer wilt and make us doubt
why such abundant love should ever drought.

But then in frigid winter, does love disappear?
In empty stem and freezing bark realize our fear
that Nature is but fair-weather friend,
and in snowy-gray resignation, her love find its end?

Undeserved are we, that cloudy faith should bring,
without fail new bloom in Spring.
And in budding petals and waking worm,
Nature, her firmly-rooted love, does reaffirm.

Behind us banging on sound-proof glass,
is some sobbing shade who does harass,
with shrieking cries our task at hand,
but pay no mind and grab the sand

to pour down our victim’s gaping throat,
and punish whim to ever gloat,
and pose as some eternal thread,
and offer promise it could not be bled;

but now that promise we’ll quickly check,
take icy knife and stab in the neck,
and watch red fountain paint the floor,
in crimson melancholy and cathartic gore.

I do not like this work, but it must be done,
and regret I cannot use single-chambered gun,
to blast out memory in one pristine shot,
but know this is dirty work that cannot

be ignored and our captive let go free,
to infect our hearts with misery,
and slowly gnaw at our humanity,
striking from the shadows at our sanity.

So, rest assured and pass rusty saw,
to sever limbs, but do not withdraw!
It will writhe and squirm in agony,
as we cut through bone to make amputee

of love once steeped in revelry,
in grassy field and tulip tree,
with arms outstretched pointing to the sky,
laughing with gentle breeze of young July.

But now in subterranean, cement box,
behind twelve inch steel and maze of locks,
duty to kill our own will not desist,
and turns lovers into murderers – no, masochists.

Don’t mind the blood – it’s not yet dead,
take deep breath and chop off the head,
so that separately we may finally rest,
and leave this sullied room, both dispossesed

of the parts of us that compelled this act,
and use this blood to sign lasting pact,
to scrub our hands of this heinous day,
and pray these deep red stains will wash away.

That conquest should find
warmest welcome in man’s heart,
and inhabit human minds,
in habits maligned in part and in part afraid;
confused that ambition’s pull is to but invisible end,
and that we have worn our hands chiseling tallies in the sand.

And that men should war,
and war should friend
the nature of our wit,
does birth us damned,
leaving only love to our souls acquit.

Love: relieve our self-addicted selves from the burden of our souls.
Give my passions eyes to see
that ambition’s promise was not just for me,
but love’s assurance was delivered
in hand-written letter
with solemn guarantee.

Lonely man only can
bind pages of his plight,
weaving thread until he’s dead
to complete his epic tale.

But what if this mess is morbid chess,
a game of clockworked pawns,
each mindless move on route to prove
a checkmate unconcerned.

The romantic heart may be hard to start
with blasphemies of willed amour.
Fairy-tale romance doesn’t stand a chance
against nature’s indifferent drum.

But it seems to me, we ought not to be
so alarmed by predetermined love,
the poet’s mind can always find
verse to ignite the stale and stolid.

For then with humble grace, we must embrace
that this love is not our own,
but that nature’s touch has moved us such
to the reactions of our love.

But what chance!
That from God’s womb our love should bloom
a particled romance!
That the stars’ first breath and final death
should hold our trembling embrace.

We set our decoder watches: three turns right, two turns left, four more right, twist the knob six times counter-clockwise, and push in. Tick, tick, tick.

Stripes picks the lock to your apartment, kills the janitor and uses his key to open the top floor broom closet. He unscrews the vent with his multi-purpose decoder watch and navigates the ducts using the schematic he drew inside his eyelids after surveying your home for two and a half months. He’s a professional – he gags up a rope which he swallowed three hours ago, using it to lower himself into your room head first. He slips inside your closet without moving a molecule and lays in wait for your doom, which is now inevitable.

I see you now, my comrade having maneuvered into killing position around your torso. You, of course, are oblivious and, even though you are about to die, would doubtless have a profound respect for your assassin if you knew how professionally he has handled your case. Tick, tick, then nothing. . . I stare you down, ambivalent and hard as your stripes tighten around your neck and chest. I almost cackle, thinking it may be appropriate for such a villainous climax, but I think it best to refrain lest stripes think less of me. So instead, I rummage for a quarter in my pocket . . . I settle for a nickel and flip it into the air as you fall to the ground.

And I think I saw you the day before,
floating in my soup -
I slid my lips across your leafy hair,
the way that makes you hum.

And I think I saw you just today,
dancing in my lessons,
each stroke a leap, each dot a wink,
and every sentence a new routine.

And I think I saw you in tomorrow,
outside the halo of my lamp,
whispering and grinning,
like the breeze outside my door.