You bundle your words into growls
and pitch them against the scars of others.
Aren't you the glad one able to build
bonfires and lightning storms and one time
a great tornado. It is no wonder plagues
move away from you, history repeats itself.
Listen to how you walk, my child,
words have nations behind them,
a cruelty that comes of guns and roses.
Listen to when you run, my child,
words are warlords, thick walls
spiked into soil, hard rocks and cavities.
You hold a mustard gas strength,
a calcium storm. Someone will end the horror,
remove the fracture, and, yes, child,
let your words scamper like light
in soft drizzle, like light in translucent clouds,
like the butterfly awakening on the leaf,
the wind still, its cocoon empty,
every anger in voice someplace else.
| Copyright © 2022 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively. |
A grand heightening of both malevolence and benevolence, one of poetry’s functions – functioning beautifully here through the mind of a master.
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