Rude-awakened, bare, I plunged
the mine for errors—yelled revisions
up the shaft, felt echoes drift.
Stifled gold-myths for anchors: pig-iron
chained to answers. Asked "which way?"
and felt novel paths fade to gray,
gut-checked at gates Now Boarding,
urgency-alive, departure day.  

For-Shame walks hard his two-block beat:
the love against his feet, the bleach
behind his eyes. The toll is lucid blood:
much thinner, quick-twitch coded,
primed to run. Canaries, fathoms down,
sing longing to the mask
that votes for trade—sweeps laurel off
the heads of state, befouls the learners'
****-grounds. What truth might Satan

still confound? Denounced and parceled,
grifters spend our last resort
up paper-trails that track too short—
force every sense through that
accursed mask.
To breathe, perchance, to ask.