5.

A sizzling filament follows
every footfall, to the gallows of
lost love we saunter, thinking not
of our hearts’ final plummet, but of things

               8.

being different for each other, though
unknowing they are the same for
one another were an option, though that
oversight held any water

but no, the march is one we honour, we
who took liberty’s daughter as
a wife and here arrive, convicts deprived
of freedom, men divorced from life,

into a dark grotto denying truth
any light, we wade and contemplate all
things but why, dim-lit flowers, we
fade into our own prisons of

               13.

damp night, casting oracle bones
to Venus, hoping in throwing knuckles
her pulse will quiver to blushing
flight prisoners from their lot, refreshing

this thin flesh of ours with which we
meddle, smoothing cheeks and shearing whiskers
to know what growth is, improving
our masks until we reach the end of our

walk, answer oblivion’s call
we who rejected love would rather fall
by our necks than crawl and count each
petal we dropped, so we hail our

phyllotaxis and count on what
code cracks us, ever mindful of the crash
& its impact, the law coming down
what breaks the backs and necks of plants.