Right to the empty parking lot,
Start the lazy figure eights.

Swallows skim the pavement,
showing off their effortless grace.

Pick one and chase it, lean into the turn.
foot peg scrapes the ground but I don't care.
A little more throttle. Hang on to the curve.

The swallow, banking, hovers in the air.
Locked together by the physics of motion,
The universe spins around our shared axis.

Let the bike straighten out.
The swallow banks the other way.

Laughing we break our connection,
grateful for the experience of flying together.

It's built to last, it's built to last!
Built to stand against the years.
Built to hide us with ourselves,
Against the wreck of all our fears.

Who built it we no longer know.
Who made the walls so tall and grey?
To keep us safe, to keep 'them' out,
Though who remembers who is 'they'?

We shall not leave it; we must not!
For terrors surely lie in wait
To catch us when we drop our guard.
We must not venture past the gate!

No prisons built by foreign hands
Will keep our children or our wives.
For in our fortress they are safe
To live protected, watchful lives.

I could open it without a thought,
waken its glow to fill my mind,
touch its beautiful rosey-gold.

It connected me to all we know,
Showed me all that can be seen,
Everything marvelous to behold..

Until it dropped and I broke the screen.

Typing these words didn't
make them true.

Just because they're on your screen
does not, can not, ever mean
that you should always keep on reading,
running headlong, heedless heeding.

Words may be harmful,
a poison brew.

Know the truth that many miss
Violence isn't always fists.
Ideas **** with subtler power.
Not at once but hour by hour.

I gave fair warning, my
gift to you.

Gentle reader, now that you're mine,
Faithfully following to this line,
didn't your mother teach you well:
don't fall under a killer's spell?