No Angel

No Angels are buried here.
But, if they were,
would their wings be taken,
and saved,
and placed
on top of their unmarked graves
like funeral flowers?
Sometimes, while walking home,
I’ll find blood-soaked alabaster feathers
on the bottom of my sneakers.
I cannot escape the memory
of someone else’s sky.
That same perfectly blue one that
one might gaze at as they die.

No Angels live here.
They die here…
slowly…
tiptoeing
on the outskirts of oblivion,
walking hand-in-hand
with their own extinction
like they were lovers…
When I hold their hand,
all I can feel is ash
seeping through my fingers.
And, I can’t help
but think of the light from every
lit match as a
eulogy to them.
As the autumn air warms around me
as a surrender to my body heat,
I mourn them.

No Angels are born here.
They wait for the end…
They’ve watched their own lifeless bodies
swing like broken pendulums
off the sturdy branches
of a collective apathy.
When will their deaths
mean more to us than
“tragedy”?
More than murmurs in between
silent prayers and louder curses.
They remain invisible.
The sins of their fathers
and mothers are
chained to their wings.
They drag their history
with them
everywhere they go.
When they speak,
when they sing,
when they’re allowed
to be alive,
they cradle their own heartbeat
like newborns,
praying that it
will never escape them.

When the angels scream,
it sounds like the television static
you’ll hear before you
change the channel to
something else.
When the Angels rebel,
their cries get buried
along with them.
No funeral.
No preacher.
No casket.
No tears trickling down
anyone’s face as a eulogy is read.

No obituary…
but this one.

 

Lewis Morris is a multi-talented performing artist and educator. He describes himself as a poet first, beatmaker/producer second, and an MC last. His work has been described as “Dope”. He is inclined to agree.