it was her, who stopped troubling
the land with niceties; stepped out
onto the battlefield; declared
her nation iron, under copper;

ignored the children wandering
her heart. youth was her cause, but not
her destination: yapping pups
complicit in decay: the younger,

the worse. she drew a blazing sky-
ward line: from torch to sea of salt,
past oxidized decline: thou shalt
not cross this primary design.

so she was plagued by change, and change
rendered infernal mumblings
absent colossal reality.
she swallowed smaller poetry.

commissioned shining arrows from
hard-laboring masses, to quell
their rumbling curiosity.
her staples were cement brownies,

lampshades as circus gags, popped in
electrified mazes, they tongued
chromatic polystyrene sporks.
her trick was firecrackers for

proposals of shotgun marriage,
with orphans, locked in sheds out back.
essential documents were stacked
inside official cases. fireproof.

the starry skies reflected in
a muddy flood of tasteless rain,
with deeper rivers reluctant
to drain her isolating kingdom.

so spread the miasmatic air.
seen pieces, scened for maximum
invictus — hot-bulb flashes — lost
their knack for light. she was the news:

scaffolding posed as oracle.
and when her history grew old,
turning explicit, they buried her
in broken rubberbands.

mutely, her constitution says
you shouldn’t look, or else you turn
proverbially inhuman.
so close your mind to this broken

container of one billion eyes,
open to fight the warlike hour,
their hearts pumping in empty beds.
the roosters crow to lose their heads.

on glitterbombs sit satanic
afterimages of her,
as rounds of necessary loss
resound on poorly-tuned guitars.

with no time for ambivalence,
her multitudes march on.
and nothing here to be unknown,
perspective infinite as stone —

from bone reflected, light of crone
across her scorched and haunted scars
delivered signals of empathy.
by flickering night, camels repose

in contemplation of footsteps
forgotten, where plod the wind-
whipped monuments of thirst. and all
that is unburnt is a mirage.

//

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