The breath of God
as a distant fire.
Living hard in apathy.

The wind wove through
As romance swam a shadowy lake
Of drowned “I love you”’s on I.O.U. notes.

For every holiday rode by
This crazy town where old familiar birds
Lisped with broken wings

And one knowing, foreign eye.
All this, a parrot would have
Macawed erroneously

As misused verbiage in a poem.
The tremulous cheer of traveling
Through this tumult where you and I stand

In separate cages, inhabiting the same room.
They call this our individual bubble.
I call it lost, unquiet hope.

It reminds me of the crime of our meeting.
Of a terrorized noun or adverb
Dangling dangerously in the throws of censorship.

A crime when the harp trembled
A song only sung by a stuttering man,
For this harp was missing strings.