Death Sentence

by KJ Hannah Greenberg

Today, I wait death sentence.
Excuses, accounts, even boldness. if embellished, ebbs.
To wit, tomorrow’s fancy remains embroidered,
Endorsed as such a day as when roiling warnings
Will roll against shores yielding no better truth,
No greater stone than pathetic children’s viscera.

We sorrow for want of more lucid imaginings
Before returning to elevate our dregs.
Life’s complications, impediments, crucial continuities
Sit strictly in boxes belonging to generations, maybe leaders,
Certainly to “civilian obligations,” sans glitz or not,
Also, folded as existential minutia of social currency.

Only fairy tales, kiddie pabulum, other nonsense
Hold hoary brutality as accountability-free;
In thinking women’s castles, heads of state
Unabashedly redefine select commonplaces
Confabulating laws again and once more until
The cock crows, dawn or not, with measured righteousness.