for Zena
you say
life is a building collapse
a stone rain
a brick fusillade
you are forensic of
struck shoulders,
bowed backs,
chipped teeth admixed
in stony splinters
and you say
life, you are a
a despised dissolution
a slow chemical burn
life,
you are a grave
an ash fault
a burial mound of
hungry mouths. life,
you are the
most subtle drug
and, as
you deign,
you say
there is
no thing
not unclean
no thing
unfailed
you say that
no one has ever
seen the sky
so you say
and shrug
even though the storm
will never clear
you raise your eyes
heave bricks at heaven
laugh amid
the smoke of ruin
bloody-knuckled and
proclaim
all the dead
to be sunlight