Hiroji Kubota: “Ancestor Worship in Hangzhou, China”
Whom more sacred to worship than those closest to you, emerging from fog, incense, and lit votary candles? Those shuffling specters turn mute and stare. Millions wear white for complicity in denouncing their neighbors, parents, teachers, doctors, anyone owning too much, driving them between rows of bamboo poles, coercing confessions until their tongues, cut from their mouths, spell what? Too many bones lie between the skulls of wild dogs. Erosion wastes, children rave mad in the streets, beating tin cans to fright birds from their perch and snap their wings.
Hiroji Kubota: “Ancestor Worship in Hangzhou, China”
ReplyDeleteWhom more sacred to worship than those
closest to you, emerging from fog,
incense, and lit votary candles?
Those shuffling specters turn mute and stare.
Millions wear white for complicity
in denouncing their neighbors, parents,
teachers, doctors, anyone owning
too much, driving them between rows of
bamboo poles, coercing confessions
until their tongues, cut from their mouths, spell
what? Too many bones lie between the skulls
of wild dogs. Erosion wastes, children rave
mad in the streets, beating tin cans to
fright birds from their perch and snap their wings.
[Old Disposable Poem]
Dr. Mike