us people, us us-people,
with our loose-leaf language
and graphite dripping from tongues 

like new dew, like morning tar.
us us-people: straight-laced, edges frayed, 
or thread-bared… our minds without corset

introducing order and chaos as needed…
us us-people, we topple towers and build anew
anachronistic or anarchist, even if allegory, we,

us us-people, are poets. heroes 
of a close-knitted kink so fibrous
with our phrases, we carve marrow 

into totems and turn broadband 
into steles; so sonorous with our softened 
slang. the griot, the bard, the fabulist:

each of us an us-people with civilization 
in our trapper-keepers and stardust in the digital 
tablets secluded in our pockets, like amulets

to make the sun rise and the rain to fall.