Poems, with their frustrations, are apt oblations.

See: A failure of sound in line one,
And two. And now three.
A fitting clang for a clanging land:
Half-formed,
One-third too much logic,
Savagely lucid, like a siren.

Going from Jericho to Jerusalem to family dinner,
In a beat-up Buick, taillight out. He groans,
Pierced in his side, for his wide-set nose.

Perception is

The sound of hawking CDs on the corner, is
The sound of He’s gotta gun, is
The sound of tap tap tap, is
The sound of Oh my God, is

Perception.

A black teenage boy sobs at a podium.
A young black woman sobs at a podium.
A black police chief steels his words at a podium.
A little black girl consoles her wailing mother.

Black citizens march down Commerce chanting,
“No justice, no peace.”
Police and protestor pose with a sign stating,
“No justice, no peace.”

Tap tap pause.
Tap tap pause.
Tap tap pause.

I can’t breathe.
I am mute.

This is not a thread of mismatched idioms.
Poems, with their frustrations, are fitting anthems,
Fractured sounds building up into a sound of fracture.

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