I’ll promise. Listen.
The dawn is less
musical. The beach

is written with broken
ships. Get ready
for the moon to intrude

each night
unimpeded by glass
to tell you the dark is elsewhere

and with me.

The Black Knight unsheathes his sword before beheading the
fallen hero. The sound of grating metal is actually a spatula
scraping sidewalk. The school bully repeatedly punches his victim
in the gut. The winded “oomph” his body produces is made by a
man behind the scenes striking a stalk of celery with a large stick.
A machine gun massacres a civilian Afghan town; the fire is
simply a sped-up loop of grapes pelting a brick wall. Once a year,
fireworks light up dark lives, then disappear, fizzle out like wishful thinking. Boom… Boom… Boom… The sound of almost
gunpowder. Of exploding stars. Of forgotten prayers.