Astomatous

all the cities are similar 

during the melting summer

                                     in this vast chunk of steel

                                     all the cities remind me of something

                                     I never truly lived but only heard

                                                               through a dubbed-over voice

                                                                                            [ afar from here

                                     I never felt the sun as a reward

                                     and “winter” won’t be pronounced

                                                                         so swift ever again

all the cities

          — even the tiniest ones—                  look so big

                   when you cannot pronounce

                                              everyone else’s name

//

did I tell you I ran into

                           “Poet in New York” by sheer luck alone?                                                           

: walked into a weird dream             

  filled with gigantic cows & blood rivers,

  Skyscrapers with ground beef in their gears

  “New York is not that big of a deal,”

                                              you said,

          but all these words
                            are already disappearing

my stomach is a wound

and I'm only looking for a way to gut

the mask of serpents

                      that nested my face

: all the beasts of anger

  that gather beneath

                                    my skull

that perfect metaphor of mouldering decay

//

dear liberty,

do you think a faceless land

                                    is gonna feast on our skin?

: do you think it is big enough to shelter

 all the little scalped bodies still babbling                        

                                             underneath the frozen whirling leaves?

their ranting echoes are slowly fading

to say the least                          and all the cities are trembling

                                             somehow

//

are we winning?                                Is this how it feels to win?

I do not know how to win         and yet

we are winning                        aren't we?

never, dear liberty, comes

like the wizard who died

the day I gazed at the snow for the first time

so steadily, I forgot how to spell my name

                                          without crumbling

//

Will stock up my hands with precious stones              

: do you know how quickly I can jump from a plane

                            without spitting my throat

                                                  through my sockets?

                                                 I guess death is a mouthless word