cluster siren sounds behind—
the World is so small these days,
you can drink someone’s suffering any time you’re thirsty.
 
the World is so hot today,
people and I can’t be anything but thirsty.
 
thirty thirsty days of June,
you can’t look anywhere
without seeing a taste of someone else.
someone put down the pavement, someone put up the sky.
you can wave your flag, your skin for one day,
          (flay your skin to make your flag one day)
and drink something a little less hurt.
 
a one-emperor dynasty once went under when its legalist,
torture-your-sins-away, burn-a-book-or-two (this is still our emperor)
          king
drank silver-watered mercury,
dying to think himself immortal.