All I write are emails: (Not) A Lament.

All I write are emails.
I should join my generation in a mass bemoaning.
A wailing of would-be scribes.
Denied our space to craft lyrical whimsy by neoliberal templates.

But I won’t.
Because I don’t really write emails.
I write missives of reassurance.
To a colleague, straining under anxiety who needs kindness.
Compassion between the pixels, that jumps off the screen.

I don’t write emails at all.
I write daggers.
Subtle, but murderous, where my enemy reels helpless from the blow.
On the surface, to the copied-in, a paragon of reason and sense,
While I slay their children, their vexatious projects dead at their feet.

I won’t join the ranks of the whining would-be word-spinners.
Because no one writes emails. We write love letters. Pamphlets of resistance. Intricate tightrope-walking superstructures of diplomatic genius. The most utilitarian planning communique remains a statement of faith.

We write our feelings. Rage exploding down the fibre-optics.

To slaughter the long-dead, ever-living Ryokan,
When you know that my emails are not emails, then we can speak of emails.

(Leyton, in Lockdown 2020.)