So I'll conclude with a few pieces from a manuscript
that I'm finishing up called Written After A Massacre
in the year 2018.
So I tried to write this book throughout the year 2018
and conclude it at the end of the year.
And many of the poems in the piece are called--
in the book are called "Written After The Massacre
In The Year 2018."
This one is not.
Wall.
They built the wall because they need privacy.
It is a curtain wall with a dead load, and a wind load,
and a seismic load, and a blast load.
It is a wall to help us find peace in a violent world.
It is a wall of debt.
It is a wall of accumulation.
It's a private wall built with public funds.
It is a sleeper wall with suspended slabs and floor
joists.
Poor kids are buried in the wall.
When they trade bodies for petroleum,
they slide them through the wall.
When they trade bodies for vaccines,
they slip them over the wall.
When they trade bodies for state secrets,
they dig them under the wall.
I've been treated very unfairly by this wall.
My mouth has gone missing near this wall.
My teeth have gone missing near this wall.
My body has disappeared into a brick in the wall
they built around the wall.
I meet a slaughterer at the wall.
He is kind to me.
He brings me water when I'm thirsty.
He brings me food when I am hungry.
He brings me something to kill when I'm lonely.
He brings me something to love when I'm lonely.
He brings me something empty when I need a moment to blink.
There's an endless hole in the wall.
I spit the wall out of my body.
I hide in the wall.
I become the wall.
There is a murmuring ghost in the wall,
the ghost of a refugee they shot against the wall.
There's a foreign agent in the wall.
There is an underdeveloped man in the wall.
There is an underdeveloped culture in the wall.
There are cheap people who wear cheap shoes
and cheap shirts made in cheap factories protected
by a very exquisite wall.
There is a device in the wall, a sensor
to detect movement along the wall, or near the wall.
There is news that comes out of the device in the wall.
There are cannibals and pacifists in the wall.
Their balls are to the wall.
There's a fly on the wall .
We bring our heads against the wall.
There's a brick structure that divides
one property from another.
Is a garden wall.
Is a firewall.
Is a consumption wall.
It absorbs the excess bodies from the surrounding area
well also enclosing them.
It is a wall that wears many hats.
It is a climbing wall with gelatinous membrane
along its outer cavity.
They piss money up the wall.
They know it's like jelly to the wall,
and we dream of a wall of philanthropists
with knives for eyes.
The handwriting is on the wall, do not
climb this electrified wall.
We trade cards with bureaucrats slaughterers on the wall.
They drive us up the wall.
We break the fourth wall.
We bounce off the wall.
Is the strongest wall in the emptiest part of the valley.