The Art of Burning

The soil was so bad                  even the weeds played dead

but there goes my brain on fear.             Watch the flicker of homes I grew up in.

Here, the sunset prayer I kept missing             sunset might as well be the sky’s rust.

The day they stop announcing                  which one of us has been gunned down

is the day I stop swallowing the day

but here is my heart on a sleepless night                                        and there is the moon

and there is the moon as an ashtray