NINE

BOBBY SANDS

1954–1981

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there’s a Bobby Sands Street in Tehran

one block over from Ferdowsi Avenue,

that’s true, Ireland, Iran, interchangeable mythos,

petrostates, and besides, nonviolence

is for the pepper trees—violence, that’s what the church called

your hunger strike, and Thatcher called you a convicted criminal

who chose to take his own life, recoil, corrugated iron,

sixty-six days without mint leaf

or a pinch of bread, and just forty minutes from Belfast,

you could walk it in a day with

day to spare, most concepts spend their lives

searching like that, for a purpose,

you lucky and shaved, naked, mint, skylark:

the bars of men rust

· · · · ·

—from BOOKOFMARTYRS.docx by Cyrus Shams