between teeth
These are our angels
in the Killimanjaro shadow, on the monsoon streets
paved with blood, bones, steel
these children, this pure pain,
and they laugh, and say they see
only the colors of God's eyes
cold hands, a doubled soul
I and my daughter see in the same language
and it is no color, not of eyes.
And we move among the angels
she belongs to a fallen god and I, I
am a road among stars.
We travel among our deceptions
easily as they translate pain into something wholly
inhuman and wise.
Clenched jaw, deceit grinding out past lips
unwilling to lie.
The fallen god waits, and we walk
unsteadily towards the infinity
bound by stars, velvet, onyx, shale.
1995