A Night at a Concert<\/p>\n
This night smells of brimstone,
\nneedles in the atmosphere
\npiercing the bones of clouds keeping us all together,
\na heart burning, dripping brimstone upon the road.
\nI cannot borrow the tears of rain shivering
\nall in one piece;
\nthe sidewalk is boiling from the colour of pale skin
\nto the cardboard hue like packages in the mail.
\nThe taste of cherries were in my mouth, but
\nit\u2019s all gone rotten, and
\nwalking downtown never tasted so foreign\u2014
\noh, El Shaddai, save my soul!
\nThis music is hypnotism, the traffic hungry
\nfor movement\u2014oh, let me move mildly free.
\nThe big trucks passing would rattle the house,
\nbut home, it refuses to see with human eyes.
\nHesitant as the fogbanks curling on the horizon,
\nI\u2019m strapped in silence,
\nsodden with all the secular kids,
\nin so little room to cross the road, hundreds at a time\u2014
\nmy knees are jerking just to jump back in the car ride home.
\nModesty\u2014what a suffering word,
\nbut don\u2019t we love to live with it?
\nOh, El Shaddai, save our souls,
\nFor we hardly know what we are doing.
\nwhy do we need so much space to get
\nthrough the door? One concert over, a thousand
\nmore bands to see; folding and unfolding feet
\ntreading a crosswalk of inhibition, rain settling
\non these blank downtown corners\u2014Union Street, steaming
\nof brimstone, like a river of hot coals.
\nThis movement, this consuming, irrelevant, inevitable
\nmovement\u2014beautiful, isn\u2019t it? Afford me this
\nrationed breath to move, to escape nowhere, and
\nI want to know the colour of everything
\nwithout it hurting: to know the colour of a true
\nwalk downtown, the colour of loving life. Now, here,
\nI hear the rhythm shaking, the chords being cut;
\nMusic\u2014where are you in this mess?
\nHere, now, this is how my head will lift on high\u2014
\nOh, El Shaddai, help me save this world,
\nfor we don\u2019t know where it\u2019s going. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Night at a Concert This night smells of brimstone, needles in the atmosphere piercing the bones of clouds keeping us all together, a heart burning, dripping brimstone upon the road. I cannot borrow the tears of rain shivering all in one piece; the sidewalk…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/281"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11985"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12005,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11985\/revisions\/12005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}