When Lungs Inhale Lungs

with locked eyes and pure focus - I watched the American flag

glisten before being swallowed whole by a broken promise

“don’t you get it? they fought for you. . .”

someone cries

lights from swerving cars flicker off of senseless lips

and the working man prays to every falling eagle

there it is - a ballerina dancing endlessly until

the heart blinks an eye that never opens again

a steel hand full of fire swings

without remembering its purpose

yet still feels cold / the way dementia burns in silence

a river before flooding

“those people died for you. . .”

trembles off the tongue

that is all you know. . . to run through your

precious American soil

in this moment - God and what remains

of an icicle thunder - will fuck you hard

my nation - my napalm

the credo inscribed and resonating in secrecy

brooding - like a nuke tempted to implode

if empathy ever walked near prayer

it was never in the same room as a tithe

“you stand on their graves. . .

. . .how dare you not avenge them. . .”

a man croaks at the television

for some reason there are people who think

that every lamentation is just another trophy to collect

in these moments my wonder appears like a double sided coin

marked with inquisition and insensitivity

to pick sides - a familiar game to play

when war comes knocking from above

and the American speaks - “they have started but I live - live - live”

which is to say that people are sipping cocktails

while blood spills overseas

perhaps we are just breathing in crisped flesh -

as if waiting to taste their final words for ourselves

how egocentric we must be to not realize

that the very air we breathe fails to

hesitate before inhabiting a lung

for the oxygen atoms we share can

also carry ashes of the souls

we turned away from

“evil is losing its patience. .”

and for this reason

i wish that molecules themselves

would become isolationists with

pure sentience and consciousness

therefore evaporating our bones

into the atmosphere beyond

a donation to the air

we stole from them

“hurry - the people are already dead”

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