feel the blodd of
october, orange veins, trees
shudder and fear and
fearlessness battle like
babies
for air
all this premature preening
like white hearts in snow, invisible avenues the
dead drew with their empty
walking souls
we are masks, skin and bone and muscle
fleeing blue, too much alike in
what's undernearth, too many old things
in the attic
now there are songs, you stood for
sleepwalking summers
but broke in winter, ruptured your own
vast and frozen fashions, oars and barges
that carried what couldn't be held
by something as alive as arms
now lives are listened to carefully, circled
by stones, funeral families feed each other
old bread, hiding the crumbs from the
formation-flying crows
closed eyes, we feel with our hands, with
voices that bounce around in the dark
boomerang back to our own undisciplined
ears, every edge amplified
classical music, decisioned destinies blockaded
protested, all glaring examples of colonial
backlash corsets pulled tight enough to teach
ribs to rein in the breath, the breather
the breathing
