Show me a blessing and let me bestow a curse,
An oath of sorts, born as I, into the staid slide of revolution,
My only arms in this toxic rebellion, the electric shock of so much static;
Come, pretty baby, join the conflict that calls out its conscripts
Only through the decades rolling round to zero,
Fate’s a paradoxical slattern, it’s hard to win the war
When no one told you there was a battle to be fought,
It’s hard to ready for combat knowing there is no retreat,
When no one told you that you have always been on the front line,
The enemy is napping and the abstract of mercy is as asset
Stripped of its agency, wrapped in a balance sheet and buried
In the shallowest grave, by the busiest highway, and left
To those tricky garbage coyotes to paw and gnaw.
I have kissed your knuckles and tasted the lies on your lips,
Wiped away the sheen of arrogance coating your brow;
Build yourself an empire and let me watch it fall
And while I’m waiting for the revolution to turn,
I will take the pill you prescribe and wonder
If you understand there is no cure for what you think I am,
And as my shadow grows longer, my patience stretches thinner.
When I find the time you stole, I’ll flay you open
Down to moon white bones, and no one will know
Who you thought you were or what you thought you did,
Denied that prideful, bloated flesh
You wear, a peacock display brandished as your legions’ standard;
I will hoist your carcass on a crossroads gibbet,
The shimmering wings of carrion birds the only audience
For your holy rhetoric of death;
I will build a cradle from your bones and sing lullabies
To your children,
Hush sweet child, don’t say a word,
There’s nothing that’s not been said,
Written, or smeared with the blood
Corded between you and your mama.
I will count my blessings and keep a tally,
A check-list to remind me that
I cannot hold onto the ephemeral
Fade of a future taken by the other side.
Conversations in Concrete 