Signals

by William Studebaker

A second without pain
is eternity,
and so is the kiss
between lips
of an open wound,
and when you discover
there is no forward
and when the engines
of silence sit idle,
pain will not be deaf,
but speaks
the language of the deaf –
its hands screaming
words for wounds:
hatred, bullets, indifference, gas.
There will be one
monoxide moment
when you can
almost read the dark
smoke of poetry
gathering the tribes.

–

from Passions We Desire