A weathered Monet
Takes you to
The bottom of a charcoal grill
And the grate above us
Is street concrete
Our shrill voices
Have nothing left to sing
Our lips move, but no one is saying a thing

And so I am silent, while beneath me,
On this charcoal grill,
This blackened monument of our old and better days,
Things rattle, and hum, and shriek
And in my head, I let it amplify,
Until I hear the screams of mothers and brothers,
And others whom the pheonix has burned and drained
And it makes me swear that they're all the same,
And I want to scream to everything,
But I don't know where to start

But I have a change of heart,
And I scream to everything that is righteous,
And that is honest, and that is earnest

And I say out loud,
"They overturn us
They try to pillage and burn us
We'll use the fire to light our furnace
And fuel us on the journey ahead"

The stress pumps helium into this headache,
I swell like a breaking baloon

We hope your fingernails
That dug through the wreckage will grow,
And be cleaner soon