Through Midnight Gates

Through midnight gates at Nivky Station run teenage revolutionaries, raising Kyiv to the ground with snare drum steps, violin tremolos shout, They cannot stop us! - Sliding, gliding on aluminum bannisters, underground escalators to the evicted homes of megaton bottle-rockets, snake-like tombs where missiles once lay are filled by flying yellow lines, Stalin’s blue trains. - All aboard! Chuting the subterranean, keeping company with accordions, moving chess boards, and the Gypsy in his daisy dress nicking soda bottles for a trash bag collection. - Screeching halt, swinging open a village of riverboats illuminated by bass pumping celebration. Our young soldiers race ‘cross broad shouldered seas, Faces ebbing, flowing tides, Humanity’s current forming circular cells surrounding Iranian break dancers. Coffee-grinder kicks, sling-shooting liberation, splattering graffiti on concrete walls, shaping three white owls, lidless, they stare, on all us battle-criers. - Fear evaporates the sidewalk cracks, freeing our hands to break ‘DO NOT CROSS’ tape, to sound the victory, unleashing passion dormant. - Hold her like forbidden treasure, as tho’ skies will rain red hail, hold her tighter still. Paper hearts fly, burn this night to make a morning of ashes. Look down at us, lit by flicker’d flame among monuments forgotten, golem’s frozen. For daring future is not a statue, it is an infant mosaic; Tiles, rise to the call.