EVERYTHING IS PULMONARY

They’re holding a rally to save
the anarchist bookstore that gave
our first glimpse through the mist
at the primitivists 
and their sacred green and black star.

Tips from the collective cafe
are offered up to save the day.
This rickety altar
no rock of Gibraltar,
Hercules never stepped where we are.

And I can still see the scars
from all the uprisings 
the bricks wear their char
but what’s most surprising 

is the times they don’t burn
for the myriad spurned
and the beatings unearned
and the meetings that turned
as the white people yearned
to not be the ones that had so much to learn.
So they returned
to the ferns
at the top of the berm
upon which existential foundations stood firm
but the germ
that these terms
might be riddled with worms
like a sperm when it swims,  it grew strong and it swerm 
to a river of gasoline.
Try to discern:
when you try to transform how things are then they burn. 

And so the third motherfucking police precinct did burn. 

***

In the presuburban dawn, 
the tranquility of a modest neighborhood 
punctuated by ash
from the uprising,
from the righteous rage 
of the streets it went up
rising on the wind
falling gently on edged lawns
thirty blocks beneath. 

***

Everything is pulmonary.
Focus on the breath.
Bring your attention back to the breath.
Bring your attention back.

Bring your attention 
to the knee that plunders oxygen
to masks from the pulmonary pandemic
into which are shot
chemical irritants, epithets and commands. 

Bring your attention closely now
to the accelerants
ignited by the holy
or the outsiders
anarchists or white supremacists.
Cars without plates
and unsubstantiated online debate.
A last supper served four centuries late
and right here in the city that birthed you
the apostles are choking on curfew.