Where I Am

I started
a song and dance man,
thrumming of rhythm,
lucid of melody, until
I became a singer of
the self-same soul, a
Po' Daddy Lazarus
fretting his hour on
a rusting stage.

So then I cubbed a stinking badger:
Press it and it mouths page one words,
folded, always folded and hacked,
though the vigilled can thresh it.

I eat my tongue for lunch
as the down-winding tyrants
of a once-free empire
that sold itself to
the sweetest bitters,
wander past, honking
like oboes passing gallstones.

Well, what of it. Time will tell.

Until then, I shall stride
your broken midnights,
a harbinger of gates,
ours to take,
when and only when
we as a people step
to where we can dare
to climb.