You want to put the barrel of the gun in their mouth,
to stop the noise drowning the music out;

in thrall to the curvatures described by birds in flight
& feelings inscribed in nameless street lights.

You want a language defiant of time:

                                    indelible lines,
chords of memory
                                    transcendental & sublime,

the contingencies of life unified
into one
        single

                song.

You want what you cannot have:

an abstract/visceral expression of all that

unknowable,
                                    ephemeral

sound enclosed within bones
where the brain sits
& compels you to this
                                    futile release:

the fading gaze of a caged beast,

never the same as its first raw moment
of existence.