Morale

You find it difficult to keep your lips shut.

A hazard. Pushdown.

Fallen birches sash the embankment.

Then, the feeling of worn neon, weak wink.
How inaudible your own emotions are,
how peculiar.

A tiny portion of sadness lodges like a squeak
in a flute, or anger subtracts its own perforated edge.
The overcrowded boxcar of happiness just thunders.

You press the damper pedal, jam a thumb
into clay, pretend those trees won’t
blaze as logs in another fire.