(ten years after)
Every tone I murmer
Is the interrogative woo—
Whooshing interstate
Escaping city clutches—
Gnawing fingers unbinding
The soiled text of time.
Every note I raise
Billows from red brick
Smokestack lightning rubbed out of
Blinked eyes with raw fists
And coughed into the grey—
Grey spaces.
Every chord I strum
Is the fresh grafitti’d concrete sea,
It’s dying waves expanding—
Cracking underfoot
To trip unsuspecting children
Crying into crevasses that
Swell and close over.
Every song I sing
Is a lie; diffused across
Banners and rading fields with
Death, blindly echoing
A whisper of greatness, tiptoeing over
Naive lips licked by thrashing tongues,
And rocketing into the open space
Where there is only one tune, one voice.
– Rich Yespelkis (1955-1976)