build the walls, brick by brick and stop to contemplate the ceiling
the sky is black like a milne watercolour in a gallery
too small for its city but well-intentioned like the rest of us,
tired and trying like the rest of us in the stormy epilogues
of sunlight our kings and our men (jokers all of them)
invading some warmer plane with brighter lights
and properly thought out plans of attack in some more
radiant place with raked sand and sparkling children
(captains all of them) sensitive and blessed with grand
brush strokes (lilies)—left with impressions the rest of us,
thinner coats of paint and earmuffs packed away like the dirty
ghosts of sound from the last great conversation
which begs to be repeated beneath a lighter expanse
beneath a brighter expanse and those city signs will not trick us,
will not have us believe that we’ve arrived, we know better,
the rest of us, having been deprived, having tried
the honest costume and having been discovered in the most
painful circumstance (bare) we will afford the rest of them
no grace and no advance we will orchestrate this war from
beneath our black sky (violins) and we will be victorious
we will die victorious with the blood of our slaughtered
borrowed futures testifying to our glory, testifying to a breed
of success so twisted that only the trampled spirits
of our generation will know its celebration will know
the walls that we have built in these afterthought years, bound
and blistered by modernity (and what should follow) only they
will know the brick to lay, the pride and secret, the dry
dust-filled breath and only they will know that we’ve kept
at bay the demons of our black skies for one day, more
fighting with the cruel vigor of orphaned warriors,
the sparkle of our unborn babes sharpening our dirty blades
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