Libyan Patriot

A shaft of light is caught in your chest

weary nights to extract the glow

but the bones cover quickly

release only the coming darkness

refuse to enter the new path

flooding fire and the burning continues

my city is damned by the future

condemned in its past

this version of history must be erased

and the only erasers we have come from the moon, the stars,

the jaws of our broken and suffering

and this pattern of elegant abnegation cannot continue

there’s a comet racing across my lungs

pulling the smoke-fire and shattered eons

into the heart where arteries have flowed back into veins

and there isn’t any sort of harmony

I cannot breathe without this searing burning negligence of form

a comet in flesh is unusual

but I cannot reveal the source, purity being tantamount

to infinite despair.