One-Cent wasn’t his real name,
just the name taped on him
by authorities who had their own purpose,
taped on the wood of his forehead
at a slight angle, trueness unimportant.

I am a catafalque
rising pretentiously
like the pie in Jason’s oven
out of a conflation of a changing self
& a pile of remnants of Nan’s DNA.

Quill-feathery high-minded rhetoric declaiming
on life liberty … well … try pursuing happiness
if you’re woman if you’re enslaved or poor
unpropertied or indigenous facing genocide.

Standing amid the death-censors
“You cannot succumb to Thanatos
all for all”, I said to them to ward off
their collective suicide. Unheard.

I’m not one to admire change. I’ve been here
for billions of years and will be for billions more,
and in the time it has taken me to draw a single breath,
you meat puppets went from pissing on the savanna
to whipping past my feldspar plains a dozen times

Contemplating the eye of a loved one,
you have noted the white of the sclera,
Its contrast with the pigment of the iris,
the cast pulling your focus. Encircling