I’m not able to sing underwater
the way the sea stars do
next to empty champagne bottles,
but I hear their songs in the distance –
like sunsets through tinted windows –
that knock on the doors of my skull,
stopping sundrops with blue umbrellas.
If we can’t stay
within the birds and formations
and we try painting tulip petals before they bloom,
how could we ever echo
the ring of the train’s silent track,
coloring in the lines of a dirt-road tune?
Should the subtle chemicals laced
in common chord progressions
poison the trees to lose their branches,
eat the clouds up as cotton candy,
and pray that the briefcase without its latches
holds inside, the melodies of the many.
Because as traffic cones fall
and railway cars halt
and dissonant weeds are pulled from the ground,
we can feel the stop and go
of a self-mummified world
through every creature’s internal sound.