Heart moved that stands now still;
Don't mourn the new martyrs,
Remember the days when you were they.

Burning flame now drowned in ash;
Try not to weep at the war drums,
Keep quiet your dirges, and let them burn.

Forgotten child of the revolution;
They know not your suffering yet,
Hide the torn flag in the corner and sing along.

what curious eye does she turn to us all!
with such anticipation does the gilded pen hover over the parchment of human kind,
carefully awaiting each glory (each fall)!

how many clamour towards her,
how many raw, desperate voices shriek for attention,
how many anxious fingers upon her robe?

and yet how rarely moved, that waiting, inquisitive brow,
how rarely inspired to take a name, a date, an episode!

(of course, she makes her constant notes, but these are not what we remember)

those lucky few are branded to the page, tied irrevocably to this earth, to our minds, their names etched along our bones,
she points the ink-stained finger at those to be made immortal

of course, she is want to be fickle; she turns away the eager eye, and the song goes unsung
(lucky are those upon whom her attention is forced; think 1832)

be mindful of her, if you clamour;
feel the eyes on your back, the gaze at your heel,
write your name upon her scroll and into the sky.

You would have said, seeing the thoughtful reflection of his eye, that he had already...been through the revolutionary apocalypse.*

I live in fear that I will die and meet him;
Liberty’s marble lover who once proudly proclaimed that
the nineteenth century was great, but the twentieth century will be happy.
I fear that I will meet him,
that he will ask if he was right with eager breath and waiting smile
and reach behind my eyes to scour my memory for the world he left behind,
for the happiness he prophesied from his makeshift plinth.
I fear that those burning eyes will dull with the aroma of burning flesh,
with the din of anguish and horror,
with the cold fingers of disillusion and resignation that pushed themselves into the minds of those still living,
with the happiness that he foretold overshadowed by the horrors our age has cloaked itself in.
I fear that I will have to apologise (or worse, that I will be able to say nothing)
I fear the downturn of that haughty lip
I fear the cracking of marble

he was terrified of the dark,
and so he chased the sunset across the horizon
stumbling after it with aching ankles
and clinging to the sunset’s wrist,
fearful that he would trip
stumble
fall behind
be left alone and feel the cold soak his bones
this lover of the light ran himself into exhaustion and,
tripping,
stumbling,
fell behind
to be left alone
but the sunset stilled, blazing across the sky,
to lift the desperate, ardent disciple of its rays
into its arms,
and carried the poor straggler
until he no longer feared, nor knew, the dark.

with slender steps & silent fingers
he creeps through the breathholding house
as Hypnos plucks at his mind and the night chill runs her cold nails across his skin
he shrugs all off and surges on through the dim
rustling still, frozen air as he tries to rub free the heavy lull on his eyes and the ink spilled below them by too many nights such as this
the world yawns cavernous around and for him and threatens to swallow him whole

it itches
just below the skin, it itches
i itch
for burning throats and singing skies and skin torn open
feet untethered and bruising the ground
for clarity and racing wind and chaos
for something (anything) raw
i need to shatter
to be ripped apart
i need new tastes in this stale mouth
new thoughts in this static, stagnant brain
new ways for my muscles to ache

the sunlight shows us too much
i prefer the fluorescent lights in shop windows
or the melting pools of humming gold that streetlights spew
to show me the shadows and fleeting faces
the dark clustering in the hollows and on the plains of a face
is far lovelier to behold than the light of day revealing all
  and beating back shadows with a burning, relentless fist