In a club at Oz,
I collect the reverberations
of the songs of our dead
into a glass. The amplitude
of their voices so high, the
glass cracks. They danced
to talking drums. & ogene.
We dance to the riddim of
guns & gurgles of blood.
The harpist rubs his fingers
around the rim of a glass filled
with mercury, the vibration
says, Blood is steel. Then, we
drink from our hands, because
our kylixes taste like the tip
of a bullet. Mammal us, we give
birth to our fears alive. & nurse
them into a plague, into ruin.
That is how we self–destruct.
I pour our seethed tears into
another glass; it cracks. What
breaks a glass is always a soft
language. Say, hope. Say, Love.
Say, freedom. What mends us
is agony. & in every version of
this elegy we end with thirst at the
shoreline of a river, afraid to drink.