Poem (Chicago)

'My age, my beast!' - Osip Mandelstam On the lips a taste of tolling we are blind The light drifts like dust over faces We wear masks on our genitals You've heard of lighting cigarettes with banknotes we used to light ours with Jews History is made of bricks you can't go through it And bricks are made of bones and blood and Bones and blood are made of little tiny circles that nothing can go through Except a piano with rabies Blood gushes into, not from, our wounds Vietnamese Cuban African bloods Constellations of sperm upon our bodies Drunk as dogs before our sons The bearded foetus lines up at the evolution-trough Swarmy bloods in the rabid piano The air over Chicago is death's monogram This is the Were-Age rushing past Speed: 10,000 men per minute This is the species bred of death The manshriek of flesh The lifeless sparks of flesh Covering the deep drums of vision O new era race-wars jugular-lightning Dark glance bursting from the over-ripe future Know we are not the smilelines of dreams Nor the pores of the Invisible Piano with rabies we are victorious over The drum and the wind-chime We bite back a voice that might have emerged To tame these dead bodies aid wet ashes