{revision/expansion: better or destruction?}

incantation for the hard road

red, hum, the light, out-walk death, safe passage. safe passage.
light walk, safe red, humming, passing / hum safe rumble
distance walking death-safe passage out
red hum passage rumbling lo though we walk
death-red passage hum walk passing safe think passage
through the valley of red light exploding humming walk out
this red safe passage light (death) surrounding

fear no evil

*

this is where the bomb broke through the ceiling of the shelter.
here is the outline of a woman holding her child, disintegrated.
there's a reason you don't see this on CNN. this is our doing.

*

some stand. some fall under bulldozers
driven by men just doing their jobs, just
following orders under a Rafah sun, red hand
after red hand on the wheel / some fall. some sit
in the blue glow of computer screens trying
to write it down / begging an anonymous god
for words

*

do not invoke Sysiphus. not Achilles or Icarus
/ no pale myth of warning.

*

what night holds / is not red. not / moon at all but
a child's shiny shoe, metal sliver, hot-faced men, some
petulant fists, candles (safe passage), this night our guess
at being something not so mutable, not
so easily led, someone
who does not surrender

*

this is a boy with two fingers in the shape of peace.
yes, he knows what it means. it's Baghdad
and old men in cafes are sure Americans must not know
what's happening

*

some stand red-palmed under the moon and some
take planes to countries that have already almost
killed them to bring back stories

*

(safe passage)

*

we fuel. we burn through daily and wake
anyway, we hummingbirds dreaming of Sisyphus knowing
there is another side to the mountain, we go on.
listen: a face that toils so close to stone is already stone itself

*

the key, Achilles, is to regard the heel as a gift

*

/ we push. know the heart's invisible work mends
not just itself but the world's heart, that bad engine
struggling, and his and hers and is fuel, that the wind relies
on the hummingbird's speed and what seems like stillness

is Sisyphus' first breath and shoulder to stone again
/ we are not myth.

*

what gives, Icarus? there's work on the ground

*

/ fling our fist-sized hearts into the void
and push, believing. knowing the stone we roll uphill
leaves a clearer path than one made by walking

alone / we do not explode. become the stone
we push, cheek to rock, a kiss, a hummingbird's faith in levitation
our belief in the other side we will never reach
teaching us all we need to know about joy.

***

note: italicized line is from The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays by Albert Camus; translated from the French by Justin O'Brien, 1955; Vintage Books edition of 1991.