vernal...

illustration by Louis Le Breton from the Dictionnaire Infernal by Jacques Auguste Simon Collin de Plancy (1818)

watching the coal mines entertain

(travelling train human folly roll by)

dance of scratch

and ritual

we holler

collared lotteries

barker-ed entrances

exams given

pieced by eight

we are slag-flesh

fresh time stamps

we are disposable moments

written about

in the margins

of a captain’s

and accountant’s log

we are

the mouths

the many

we are desperate

we are hot metal

held against skin

chains and wheels

clack rhythm sleep

we are hopefully

again next year

little scars souls

grow into

what they want

to win

yes, I sang

every lungful

of this song

reeks of it

we are bread

and furnace ovens

we are a desert night

we are the quiet

and the bones

we are the poured

back to life

the glass and wine

the swim to crawl

we are all about

the yeast in shadows

most times

we are

counting ways

we cup

what we covet

sometimes

we even fill

with an empty

of reason

to hunger

for any more

we are cyclical fats

proteins between roots

we cling, reading leaves

we are stories

we tell so well

over and over again

we are bamboo cricket cages

we are what we rave about

sudden smiles

washing over white

good luck apparitions

neon, we are apparently aglow

we are angels now

stealing everyone else’s dreams

we speak

tongued

wearing

miles of open road

sandwich sign saying

give us your skeleton key

we thirst to be inside

your sate and infinity

we have limbs for your eyes

noses for your memories

EJR ©