labyrinth plaid

wood-panelling
sesame seeds incensed
             to unspeakable 
                     sweetness
children
holding
hands
                     the pallor of
frost-flensed sycamores
holding court 
on slashes
         cryptic stench of gas, fresh
                               cigarette ashes, chasing
                               untraceable meaning and being
                               and innocence, emptied
creases 
clenched,
uncrumpled, still
some slain crane cramped, caught 
freed from the doddering whac-
a-mole gavel’s im-
pacted, cracked, 
protracted and 
gravelly slip-
stream,
strip
ping
 
the weight of this
bindle-knit, taped,
and umbilical gait, gouged
round around sallowing links and the
thinkpiece carpark car-
nival-barking pachinko parlors
gods-made-flesh are displacing the 
lot of our parks for—here’s
 
the hand-cramped stamp I’ll
send to the mayor about 
data centers, trying to
stitch all our pockets to-
gether to one gilt, hem-
orrhaging windsock:
 
labyrinth plaid
wood-panelling 
sesame seeds incensed 
             to unspeakable 
                     sweetness
children
holding
hands
and
 
everything
memory marries
to feeling
mortal again
to feeling merely
human.