Bare Resistance

I wish I could hear the magic in the world again

Smell the darkness,

Feel playtime and broken rules

Squeezed between my fingers

We'd have loved

Not a particular thing

Nothing so quaint as people

Or the burning

Of time

Something about maps

Making your world on the mark

Tying places behind the ears

With mask strings and

Bedtime stories

Where is she going with this?

Posters of children

Stage curtains for breakfast

Making powder of light

Attention, listless and named

For the children of posters

Painted buildings aren’t lain into canvas

With guns of a drinking age.

There are no fingers, no brushes, nothing whimsical

Just the calculated rot of preservation.

The real painted buildings are

Works of wonder

Sinking as they pass

The curvature of memory

Smells have notes

Not like darkness

Nothing so quaint as margins

Woodwind masks with a timbre

Of gaping acceptance

Wonderment in the face of measurable magic

I wish I could hear it