When empires fall
The twilight air is difficult to navigate.
Emperors, as acolytes, tumble thick and fast.
Once commonplace, imperial belief
is now unwanted choker made of rattling husks.
Base metal drives out good.
Enhanced, it has become a luxury to mean.
The naked ruler’s
edict makes no sense.
Prized guillotine to point it out,
but promises are contracts made in air.
“For the nation’s famine
I take full responsibility,” he says.
“How would it differ, if that were not the case?”
This quiet act’s uncommon bravery,
owning of a dictionary’s an indictable offence.
Encountering pain
Pain’s isobars connect and disconnect.
Its equivalence distinguishes.
It is the esperanto of the dispossessed.
Pain changes synapses.
It lights up led’s of recognition,
It solders solidarity.
Pain X-ray prints
the structure’s skeleton
its erasure would have tolerated.
Pain’s syntax
whispers
severed sinew wince.
Pain breeds clarity, cold early
morning on the waking voice,
then soothes the undefended throat.
Pain does important business
while the tired watchers sleep.
Pain, the antithesis of power,
a silent anthem manifesto,
its negative is victory in utero,
Pain is the engine roaring in the
cathedral subterranean garages of change.
Its wheels spin raucous diesel stink.
Pain will not live on anybody’s scraps.