the colony

 

I found myself a new world

sailed around its ring

I wrought myself a country

and I crowned myself its king

I made myself religion

carved christ in ivory

I deemed an airtight Sunday

to justify myself all the bleeding

I clawed myself a nation

and I’ve shopped its waterways

I crack the dirt for smoking out

rhymes of energy

I gouge myself a pipeline

and I dig myself a mine

I take myself a forest

to sap the growing up of your shrine

 

I’ve halted ghosts from dancing

swept the prayers from the last ones left

I kept the drums from breathing

it’s I that warped the blanket’s web

I that warp the blankets weft

 

to speak in some such candor

I rip from the condor’s wing

I feed on loving bodies and take

the land from them to stanch their living

take the land from them to stanch the living