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22 Vocabulary of Ashes Tonight my mind plunges with crows and this blood strobes its circuitry with something prophetic, oracular, lunatic. I want to be a sibyl. I want words to rain down like miracle, runneling down the trough of my arms, rinsing the subtle light from my wrists. What’s become of my pentecostal tongue stoking its vocabulary of ashes? Instead, a mute augury rests in the grave of my mouth. There is nothing left to name. All of history is so much bone-lumber, stacked and limed, and the future is heaped deep and high with more of the same. In a dark time, some men stride on pridefully while their hearts fester in their chests. Their forked voices abrade the airwaves of alleyways and avenues, and we invite it. Thunder adds its statement, answering such improvidence with a promise of ruin. Lightning swastikas the horizon, and entire elegies spill from our eyes. On what tablet is it written, on what sacred scroll, the means by which we must atone? I have studied the vast psalter of sky and it has taught me nearly nothing. Let this night’s fierce angels singe the edges of all the days to come with the fire of mercy. ...

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