I’ve witnessed that business they call
building a utopia for so long,
higher up the Atlantic where yearning to breathe
free meets committal at the gate.
I’ve been so frightened, friend.
They say over here that we catch the other nations’
colds across the water in the storms, so
often I wonder how to ward them off:
what warmth but a hearth of good-mornings,
what vitamins but the scent of fruit
from neighbors. I’ve witnessed this
utopia-building business bake bricks from
screaming, friend, and I’ve seen the masonry
trade grow on it, shake down big spenders
for iron, for foil tents, for rations,
for tears with which one churns cement.
We keep saying that this is like a fantasy novel,
the ones where there are great houses or great cities
or great castes, the ones that cast us castaway,
the ones where the aching children free the phoenix
from their ribcage and torch it all.
We keep saying it’s a poorly written one,
because look at the dialogue, look at the
mise-en-scène, and look, there are so many children,
but where are all the flames? And friend,
I have seen the utopia business pick up
outside your house, I’ve worried about the shape it takes,
worried about whether the scenes resemble
the shouting on Market Street
or the shouting on Tragarete Road,
whether kingdom’s copper foot
lifted from the waters of war
and crawled to the shore with
all its crows. What else can my soft hands
give but worry? And is saying so even
my right? But if the stories taught me
anything about how to prepare
for this moment, it’s this: everyone has a little
fire to spare, a neighbor for whom to share it,
someone for whom hope is the phoenix
still waiting, pecking at our skin while we call it fear.
And you can have my fire, but first,
have this other thing:
I love you, friend, and I love you more with each flambeau-word your tongue waves for your street,
with each phoenix-word as you throw the weighted consonants against the glass walls of this.
Take both. The stories say when we can spare just those,
one beside one, two beside two, there’s no wickedness our clasped hands can’t split, even when
beside is an island in the other direction
where you cannot hear my heartbird
crying out to yours, be safe, be safe,
but burn those bastards’ pillars down.
And it sings, it sings
the song the poems say it would sing,
for you, friend. You.