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.