V—In Case of Emergency Break Poem

     -for r.a.washington

These are-
gran­ite days,
they demand-
hard men,
for­ti­fi­ca­tions
of strange shapes
watch­words-
must blend in

We split
the rift
wider-
broth­er gives
grift- but my
words are
for­eign cur­ren­cy
in his hands.

The song­birds
The long words
spill into our
ears- “from
whence came ye,
wan­der­er? to
loi­ter in the eaves
of spring.”

     “I can­not fid­dle,
     but I can make
     a great state
     from a lit­tle city.“¹
     Local anom­alies
     in the sec­ond law
     of ther­mo­dy­nam­ics.²
     ‑raw vocal­ized.

Watch
the can­dle’s wick.
The times change
and light mul­ti­plies
but men remain
the same. Their
tongues estranged
by tax­on­o­my.

I hit you
because I am
small.
And you are not
like me.
I am small, but
ter­ri­to­r­i­al.

Any truce
seg­re­gates our
speech, as war is
two cheap­er
than peace.

How do I solve
for x in a lan­guage
that has no let­ters?

these rid­dles of
arrang­ing adjec­tives.

—-
¹ cf. Themis­to­cles
² cf. James Blish

I’ve been work­ing on this for a few weeks now and I think it is final­ly sound­ing good enough to appear here. I’m still try­ing to tight­en up some of the words and images, and smooth out some of the rhyme. Any sug­ges­tions or ques­tions or work­shop­ping would be appre­ci­at­ed.