My silver-belt-buckled cast’s shadowed pearls

Whitening the dirt of the dawn’s damp floor—

Reservations @Dorsia, Nagel’s girls’

Lightning-wit third-eyes blinking them Selves sore—

This is how one night turns a life into

“This”. Is ev’ry burn I felt-and-knew now

A sliver of (l)earning spent? Is my thrift

Plaid like what my grandfathers my age wore?

Spectres smearing their opaque heir white with

Handheld words—tension-cut banners of war—

Fists sit low, each—yearning peace—they subdue.

Lit fists glow—The Red & the B(l)ack-flow, somehow

Al(r)ight, ignites me, (d)itching F(l)ame to know:

How’d I survive? Does my (he)art-chive show it?

Alexandria’s slow-burning Thoreau,

I’m not returning to [what I’ll omit].