Stardust

I'm shape shifting into stardust;
the irrevocable return to nothing -
the erratic beginnings of a universe.

this is silence's longest speech -
a wish to begin again, to correct,
to reaffirm. Hogwash! Bollocks!
my old English books used to yell
with glee between the cobwebs
of my father's shelf & the soot
of my mother's lantern.

learn of us who are gone.
learn of us who are still here,
digging trenches, learning signals -
morse code & sign language,
after all I never learned
my mother's tongue & war leaves
men empty like gasoline tanks
after forest fires drink too much
arson into their laboured breath.

I'm purging myself - a cathartic
quenching of self. feels like
putting iron to wound, like the
old days fevered with heroes
as it is said in our history but
what do victors know
of the pain of losing?

let us cast the lost limb in golden
motes of revered sunlight shining
through the keyhole that spies
the shrivelled garden - the cancerous
space impoverished with ashes
& the dusty footprints of leaflets
calling all to bear the gongs again.

what if my permutations are true
& I, a minute speck shape shifting
into the possible, is also a prophecy
perched on the lips of fatuous
meddling stooges standing on boxes,
yelling ayes & nays & getting stuffed
with the noxious ends of their
Flatulence?

what if I am a god?
Ogun forfend! Broken as he, broken
again between my knees.
what else is left? the sun?
that bald ball of gases twisting
for tips on the pole of the universe's
hungers?

he too will have his own nights.