You and Who Remembers 

You and Who Remembers 

First light at the district. The avenues barely scorched, and already men and women swarm the streets in their tired suits. Dealers, clerks, aides, an entire colony of commerce trying to catch the minute and its quick steps. Even the sparrows, tired of their melancholy songs, are poised to flee their branches for seeds. The morning is a street yanked out of a dream and thrown into the city. Never mind the signs. Never mind the trace of buses, the vague clamor of old trains. Money has a song, and I have unbound my wrists from timbers. They remain so. This instance, everything’s where it’s supposed to be. The shadow of wings on the pond comes and goes, the beggar asks and never receives. You can tally your debts on the water and hope it remembers. 

What Stirs

It might as well be disease.

It might as well be question’s echo 

Treading through such dim halls.

Whether or not it’s ghost,

It’s looking for passage 

To besiege: 

Radio static swelling

Just before the anchor 

Speaks of genocide, intervention.

Howls under rusting roofs

Below rustier bombs.

A window after dust settles

So you may overlook the wreckage.

You say, Ruin is ruin.

Still, no one rises from a grave.

In some cities, wind

Can sometimes be not breeze,

Merely tremor.

Creed

I denounce my victories. I resist my urge to hoist a blade over my days of longing, hours of work, or this ghost of frailty that lets me walk alone. I vow instead to defend my innocence, this luscious oblivion. I yearn to forget my joys – the scent of her hair, a precious meal after a month’s labor, a soft bed after a long day. At this country’s birth, when my people brandished rust to claim their throats, they decried their fears in blindfolds, convinced to pull the trigger or jump into a trench of fresh coals. They gave their arms for lesion. Blood, their word. 

Take what you can, then. I forgo my name. I forgo my money and my sanity. Just leave me my sweet delirium. When the cups clink, when the soprano sings of battles won, bear the fruit of my absence. Place my bones in a good coffin. Permit my ghost to inhabit the dim halls. 

After Hours

Lampposts forge a fortress on the pavement.

You cross the street, and a car cuts your next step.

You make a call for an extension, a check leaves your pocket

For another bill, your teeth bear the weight of your body.

This morning, the sun built a shadow of a house

Inside your house, doubling the walls, the cups on the table.

Night comes to take this away. You drag yourself

From one street to another, all set to start a fire, break

The windows, slit the throats of all the dogs who dare 

To bark and race you. A revolution is on the way,

Or so the revolutionaries say. But tonight, your heart is a child

Who had scraped a knee, getting up and looking for a place to stay.