Not Romantic Anymore

We are healing rituals

With all the dusk melting on our shoulders

Across the poolside of raw, dented metal bones

‘All the state is not romantic anymore’

I heard my mother, under her bleeding bandages

Proclaim to me, in a light voice,

Mildly rowing towards the forbidden art of ashes

‘All the state is not romantic anymore’

We strum the birdsongs across the Eden

But shed blood on the same auburn guitar

The streets are poet's hands

Cupping the spring blossoms like

Newspaper cones of fresh tulips

But it will watch you sink

Under and beneath dead white roses

Still looking like an unkempt, dried chaplet

Placing softly all the rosaries under the tunic,

Like sins in a jar of coveting spades.

In this countryside

You and I will watch

Wild horses churning up dust with their hooves

Yet not failing to watch

The pyre of monks

Heaved with whiffs of smoke 

Darker than black tea.

This state is not romantic like Campanile bell tower,

Sighting the mosaics

And the city’s crimson roofs.

Not too like renaissance art,

Or the terracotta-tiled dome,

And even you.

This state is bloodshed eyes, exhausted bodies

And dying minds of the prison.

This state dedicates Grecian architecture,

But not once our songs, origami or prayers.

This state speaks mostly of God,

Knowing not it is our dad rusting 

In the ascending climb of terror.

This state talks about power,

Knowing not it is our mother 

Made with hushing fables of rain kisses

This state is not romantic anymore,

But the trees are,

The music to our birds are too.

This state is not romantic anymore,

But you are,

And so am I too.