Dispossessed

Nailing up forever
where I can see it
stark as a severed tongue
whose expectations are now
shared only with the blue-
bottle flies

mounting tensions
on attractive plaques
horns reaching
like sun-hungry tendrils
from the polished wood
so I can take them with me
even after my library
has been unwritten
my small encampment
sanitized out of existence

& I need an advocate
because the light I went toward
turned out to be an interrogation room
& I remember too late
that in Xerxes’ Persia
satan meant a member
of the secret police

*

“Perhaps most tragically, Occupy Wall Street’s roughly 5,000-volume library, compiled through myriad donations and painstakingly cataloged by volunteers, was reportedly thrown out.” —TIME

(The first line is a phrase from a poem by Dave Smith, “Tongue and Groove,” in today’s Poetry Daily.)