by Andrew S. Guthrie
Your banner is great; it stands out like famine rice or a page from your manual. We seized and squeezed your banner like a dish rag. making soup, tea, something to rinse your teeth.
We're going to raise the rope, your banner, and instead of singing we'll chant.
We are going to swarm as if we were going to a banned dance; flocking to fill your quota, sitting across a spartan desk pushing and pulling, letting it settle down only to stir it up again. The froth our sweet sacrifice to your oily diet.
Under your static gaze, we pledge to throw stuff into our hand-bellowed furnace: a cauldron, a rake, the little, essential things that your molten star requires.
If you swim in shit we will swim in those same ancient rivers; the numbered rivers of your settled borders; the place where civilization began.
You are the one whose insomnia focuses the mob. Your iconic eye bags sequestered in your library of imperial histories. But we understand, you have a lot on your mind such as playing one person off another. |