Weapons that No Longer Shoot

Maybe now was the time.  You were only meant to last as long as someone was smiling and not a moment more: the pain in your head, the fault of your heart.

A leg turned white as the door closed.  Just like the tumble of a mountain stream through the niche of stones: the same as the redoubt dug by a vanguard from Rome.  Tree leaves wrinkled above the snow and all the meat prepared for the rich; dancing in circles as the dogs slept.

He walked through a bar and into the smoke as discrimination woke and nothing was allowed beyond the line; the grotesque border of his space.

All of this I know, and with a bit of joy I measure my days by the dust and beat of new houses and the killing of men on the street.  Four died late in the night and I did not hear the gunshots until the morning brought the news.

Mute old friends leave me alone and isolated in my room.  Question marks on the floor. A mirror for passage and there is the past along the structure of my bones.  Leave money at the gate.  Tread softly away, in a file like prisoners in the mist, guarded by only two wet soldiers with stooped shoulders and helmets made of paste and weapons that no longer shoot.  The silhouette of defeat, black against the light.

Here I am, please edit me in some final movement I cannot see, because that’s the way it goes in the struggle to be understood: the end of ending, darkly stamping down.