the meeting ends

It was just a day
Starting with burnt toast
A darkening afternoon, humid
Buses drove their routes
Commuters headed to work
After a sun drenched holiday
At midday I shook with goose bumps in the sun
Uncannily, I heard something
Only a backfiring car
But it seemed further and louder
And more significant.


At that moment,
In a cold rain swept city
the court jesters
Courting eviction from their tribes
Pushing the status quo
Drawing up images of truth masked in satire smiles
The shamens, the exposers
The makers of the uncomfortable,
Non conformers, thinkers
Sat together planning more
Shot down collectively
they died in that room
A shared joke died in that moment
No one left to witness the laughter
The truth
History lost a deeper understanding
A calling out flock of sentinel birds
In that room.

The floating night

She cannot sleep
Her shadow waits for me at the side of the bed
in the long nights
She says the wind is too loud
she can hear crying,
another young child
from further back in history
long ago another child could not sleep here
she was fearful of the night
she still cries in this child's mind
on windy nights, her cries become stronger
in the long dark nights.