|          | My voiceless tongue hastens to make a place | to consign the complacent, a pink blade | a froth of faith moistens, a weapon made | sacred once surrendered, consecrated | to the creator by one whose art takes | from anger its insidious danger, | a mage translating energy into | what burns midnight tapers to fill paper, |          | frantic as a dagger, taking kingdoms | of silence from failures who took thinking | for granted, digging pits for the wicked, | I am a magician whose speech breaks charms | against songs of shattered glass, my idea(l)s | food for weak jackals, passing moods I pass- | off as “normal”, storms I flesh out, morsels | of attitude flavouring without pause |          | those unsavoury truths biting deep with | unforgiving tooth what things my mouth shouts, | foolosophy for those hounds h(a)unting my | shadow to swallow, ritual filling | wounds with words whose sounds are too difficult | for the shallow to pronounce, my work’s flow | healing souls of bad omens vultures dropped | on the summit where we halted, two doves |          | stranded, lives remanded by sentences | where the spirit disappeared, taking with | it our breath, stopping our hearts and their death’s | progress, for those reflections of sunset | whom love neglects: I dedicate this one, | offering to my sisters and brothers— | my fellow fugitives—a treatise on | the strategic use of negative space, |          | authoring courage for those whose faces | are moonlit craters with nothing to say, | erasing from chaos what hinders ours | escape, drawing on fragments and flakes of | wisdom sages suspicious of misuse | had time hide behind beards of cloud, shrouded | by blankets of arcane language, which has | wintered long millennia in tacit |          | wait, for tongues of flame to thaw and scrawl on | something so innocuous as to seem | nonexistent, cryptic hieroglyphic | eye-openers no one else before or | since has seen—bear with me, if you will, as | I reveal secrets while keeping them each | concealed—preaching a gospel awash with | thoughts given form, god dwelling between words.