Mudang

Favorit ---
the night a sprinkled secret.
a banquet of decaf and nachos,
beans, toast, and shit soup
--- dostoevsky ---
--- anna akhmatova ---
you go quiet at a mere mention
of John Hurt and Jimmy Yancy
--- quiet like night-time gardens
like trees in Basho poems,
as your breath turns warrior soft.

but that’s nothing, right?
compared to your eyes like blades
when we swap war stories,
tip-toeing our wounds,
discussing enslavements,
psychosis – ancestry
- an emotional biology.

your spirit – a tender membrane,
a volatile warmth,
emanating a thousand
unwritten poems – novels,
a literature of spells,
recipes, and rain dances,
that outclass the gods.