Your kerosene lung ignited is not
fable or fodder, is not sewage siphoned
from stern and starboard.
Those cuffs are not slapdash plums
plummeting cracked branches
whenever summer divorces
your garden. They are crows
auditing your liver at each fiscal
cycle. A round table
of tasers huddling around
your Broadway marquee smirk
are not a gaggle of
midwives
or gratuitous gifts from the mayor.
You are not a plaque
in a rusting library, an anthem
played during the encore,
because the gated townhouse
commune merchants fear
you will appear
at the fence with a pair
of hedge clippers
and an empty rucksack.
Your kerosene lungs emulate
novas. Those cuffs are surreptitiously
soldered to your wrists, the tasers
are poised because the cloaked
real estate moguls fear you will
not rattled the cage, that you will
remain calm and slyly converse
your way into the walls
of their clogged aortas, that
you will want back what
they have siphoned with ciphers
of mortgages, or much worse,
of mortgages, or much worse,
that you will let them
keep the spoiled spoils,
because you no longer needed
them anyway, because you
have uncovered for yourself
a new nebula and they will
not be sent a personalized invitation
to join you aboard the grand mother ship.
