One Shot

Halloween 2021 Poem

I am noise
under a sentence of silence

watching ideologies
suffocated by retribution

while hope hangs over imagined votes
and funeral music plays in volts

or in millimeters

...or not at all

because some deaths
are administered in patience

over the course of years

along cadenced chimes of key rings
and the beats of breathing machines


this is a requiem for freedom


while I wonder if I'll see myself again

or if I'll ever be someone somewhere outside of my head

or if the day comes where I am not just a word
but the revolver shot beginning a revolution

televised or streamed

conceived in sleep on the run
from demons strapped,
wearing ski masks
intent on collecting my dreams

hide me in a riot
and let me crowd surf away

from the loneliness after justice
stood me up on a blind date

left me waltzing
with a handicap

and I don't dance
but take my hand
...and I will

the day my shackle callouses
begin to heal and liberty
surfaces from her coma

tipped in tunes of ascension
fading into melodic reminisces

and background realizations vivid


with the resolute fact that kings and gods

...have been born in prison