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Simon Joyner
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"There's no pilot light" the singer said,
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"but nights like these still burn." I laid
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across newspapers ripped and spread
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and stabbed like signposts through my bed
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until a symphony of laughter sped
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up to sound like violins
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lured me to the open window.
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I stared through buildings painted blue
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and bathed in buttermilk. The moon
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hovered like an empty room
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I could have spent a lifetime in.
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But even stronger was the cobblestone
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chorus, like a siren's moan
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crying "give the street your skin, kid."
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But my smokestack eyes withholding rain, oppose
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another burning wheatfield full of crows.
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The magnifying glass is lost or misplaced,
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so take this portrait from outer space.
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See how the monument swallows the speck of dust
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while the weathervane powders the roof with rust,
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until the whole junkyard's riddled ruin
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and the story of the heart's communion
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is like the leaf of dew that tried to drink the typhoon?
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A bullet backed out of a gun
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a ray of light pierces the sun.
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Rewind the film and see the frightened run
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straight into the den of the crouching lion,
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holding hands and smiling. Once
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you're there you pray for lightning.
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Lazarus, you are free now to die again.
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And cassocks flowing from head to toe, conceal
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the bruises and the burns from where we kneel.
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A match scratching a wall devours
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the darkness for a moment and tires
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or so many past flickering futures
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and has the decency to disappear,
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while thieves and aimless gypsy bands
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keep and polish the queen's silver hands
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saying "the life we cannot touch, we choose to feel."
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"War is the horror Peace anesthetized,"
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the oracle's iron lungs decried.
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"The slings and stones we keep asleep inside."
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Meanwhile headless corpses take no sides,
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spastic banners carve up the skies,
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and the translator's gifted tongue decides
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just where the difference between two opposites lies.
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Is it in the pocket mirror where every tear is rehearsed
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or in the soaring bird's eye view of the scorched earth?
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I thought if I could curl into a ball and roll
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out of my skin I'd discover a soul
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instead of a scaffold around an impulse.
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I looked for a target but found a scarecrow
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which swallowed anything I fet it whole
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until I had nothing left but vestigal
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memories, redolent and rainsoaked.
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And that's when I finally reached the egg
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where I couldn't think or feel or beg
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to be reformed or reborn. Instead
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I pecked, lurched, cracked, clawed, and bled
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and emerged blind and raw to feed once more
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on a mystery unfulfilled
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where every answer waves within a sea of riddles.
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And the cicadas forever throb on the fringes of the lens
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while I dance upon this shifting pile of skeletons.
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