Thought Bazaar


We are the thought mongers. We make hard noise.
Guts rumble with unquenchable smoke – the furnace only roars.
Heads rattle with machinery, attitudes built into plastic parts,
The rattle of fast translations, too hard to love, that love destroys.
Peering through windows where we build no doors,
Fanning minds not joined to human hearts.
We have left no-one on watch in the furnace-room below.
No fires call -- the basement is adrift in blowing snow.

We are churning the chimes of the weird bazaar
As all our kind do, and have since young.
Smoke throated, voices aflame
Tongues waving at the hopeless stars
Hopes in mean messages, meanly flung
And the hard calling of names.
And, floating up from the furnace room below,
Coals scream, surrendering to snow.