I decided to write you a note
A story told in plain speech
Without too many words, or big ones
That have too many syllables

It’s a story for the people;
I want its message to ring through the streets
To resonate in the hall,
Pollinate the ear drums.

It’s a story by the people;
Chiseled from bone and steel
Dripping with sweat,
Coughing with black lungs,
Hiding its pride like a bruise.

Birthed from the same prickly cactus
Same angry, trampled hole in the ground

Oh, our mother.
Is she not at the heart of all our great tragedies?
Harmonizing over them like a wailing siren

She is moaning a cautionary tale
Of shattered glass,
Of sea-foamed shores swallowing entire cities

People becoming pansies for the picking
No longer fit to survive
No longer quick as the carpenter
We are lined up
To be pinned down

Drowning in the waters,
We swim against the current
Just to survive
Our scaly, limp bodies flailing in the foamed rapids.

But her call falls to deaf ears
As we shuffle along, dirtying our hands.
Working for a clock that bends, but never breaks