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Abundantly Mute Crinkle of Lighted Stars
by Thomas Goss

I am a sinking love song,
heard through the wind
over stretching distances


I am the bodies of children,
stacked like violins,
murmuring about the stolen breath
of strings.


Whole generations of tearful awakening
have fed me into listlessness
and unforgiving terror
of such ordinary suffering.


Exist, yet place your fingers into the earth
to see more than a point on this starving circle.


Remember when we were children and
our compassion for all life
had to be beaten out of us?


It is the injustice of roast beef
that keeps the slaughterhouse fences so high.