A weathered Monet
Takes you to
The bottom of a charcoal grill.
And the grate above us
Is street concrete.
Our shrill voices
Have nothing left to sing.
Our lips move, but no one is saying a thing.

And so I am silent, while beneath me,
On this charcoal grill,
This blackened monument of our old and better days,
Things rattle, and hum, and shriek.
And in my head, I let it amplify,
Until I hear the screams of mothers and brothers,
And others whom the pheonix has burned and drained.
And I swear to myself that they're all the same,
And it makes me want to scream to everything,
But I don't know where to start.

But I have a change of heart,
And I scream to everything that is righteous,
And that is honest, and that is earnest.

And I say out loud,
"They overturn us.
They try to pillage and burn us.
We'll use the fire to light our furnace
And fuel us on the journey ahead."

The stress pumps helium into this headache,
I swell like a breaking baloon.

We hope your fingernails
That dug through the wreckage will grow,
And be cleaner soon.