the foundations for a christening of ash in a city of god
Where life is cheap and harder than coal-crusted diamonds
You find black that cuts your fingertips to bleeding when trying to escape
Smoking voices tell me
Smoking voices tell me
Birth is the will of your memories.
It can be more than new borne flesh.
It is the fattest promise and the most recurrent dream.
In paused light a drowsy evening
In paused light a drowsy evening
feeds me the wisdom of street corner preachers with
names I can’t remember.
They shadow me daily watching all that I do,
nodding gently at my rituals of opening and celebration
As their spell fades into the distance
As their spell fades into the distance
my secrets search for a new home.
A still, summer afternoon that billowed my thin curtains
Smoothing rooted buildings my arm can easily overcome I raise my hand to talk
static and sand feed the sound of Sunday morning meetings from 60 years past
Congregations remember when ash must be coaxed into flame
within rules of seized power, without proper consensus
We labor through attempts to forget
the violence of a world we listen to
where self appointed gods stride aside their cloaks of divinity
Birthrights reinvented in the legacies of the governing class
Fading into the secluded homes of gated communities
Trembling, winsome, sensing the tremors
of a hummingbird’s heart that beats 1,400 times a minute.
