There are books I’ve meant to read

when the lights are on the low 

that escape the dead and gone

and the hurt that’s hard to know

but alone inside my case of skin

I want to breathe the dead and gone

kiss the pictures of the refugees

and sorrow in their song

and for the hurt that’s hard to change

I wish to whisper it alive

until the hurt that’s hard to know

is known to all and not alone

for in the creases of contemptuous brows

and lands devoured and disavowed

I see the iridescence of a warming fate

that we will love each other loud

and put the scoundrels in their place

deep beneath below the ground

until the hurt that’s hard to live through

charts its place between sweet tears

and agal blooms and you and me

and all the failures coasting memories

breathe