the time of flowers has begun
and all the sorrows of this world
disappear in their presence

Don’t matter what USA say
Donald can change it anyway
If he don’t like it
he won’t play
see where that leaves you
Mr. and Mrs. Yesterday
You’re so loser

blue grey opal shoals of storm blow
tonight though it is still pink pearl dusk
and each obsidian shadow a life of its own

The very moment when all goes wrong
the thought who will pay, how will this be fixed
pale beside the sight of the mountain of birds.
The innocent, slain, built into a burial heap,
what’s wrong, in your life, with your lie?

To those on the wrong end of a gun,
song is not a shield against a bullet,
poetry won’t transform a bullet into a flower.

after a photo by Saul Leiter, “Paris, 1959”
in Paris, a café
a tiny round table
she writes on the smallest
scrap of paper available
her words must be exact