Petals and petals of plasticine, preacherless
Blanketed the soft and iridescent dirt
And feathers falling at my feet, flightless
Beamed the light, like a Fresnel, at a neon angel.

She called herself Liberty, and she was beautiful
With platinum for skin and button brown eyes
I longed to see her face, but the panels behind her
Cast her in sweet cherries that made only bitter wine
And made her glow like ignominious incandescents
That never knew just quite what they were in for.
What a cruel fate. She was always meant to burn.
And when she does, all the world will gather at her feet
And throw her bitter smoke and bitter tea
And strike matches to set her plasticine wings on fire
And she will never know the warmth that we, mere mortals, share
For if she follows it, it will burn her, and make the stars fall.

She has never known a moment’s rest or ease
Nor how to cease, dear Lord, the noise, the noise
My GOD! It’s all so smudged up and dreary
A whole life lived of almosts, and smudged watercolours
and thoughts and dreams too hurried to become actions
memories and reveries too scattered to become emotions
and all she can do is pace around and watch
as they come for her wings. Yet she keeps the longing in her mind
and dreams of a life of felt windows lit
and effortless mornings, untouched by the noise
and a real grass hill, now a wingless woman
holding a shigaraki coffee, looking at a paper mâché sky.

But it’s cruel she has these wings. What’s worse than confinement
To a tethered horizon, and a sky too cloudy to bridge?
I’ll tell you one: to have the wings to fly and not a cloud in your way
And to know the sun and the speed and the sea and the stars
And corrugated divinities that call you higher and higher and higher
But knowing you can’t, because your wings, though beautiful, are plasticine
And you can’t so much as prepare them for take-off
Without the very act of moving being so heavy and so grim.
But all the ordinary witches and moths fly much lower, but just fine.
In fact, their feathers are soft and mouldable, too.
But you. You’re the angel. You’re special.
And the LORD destined for you to burn.

But one day, some men from Earth came yelping from their candle tops
And unleashed paper aeroplanes threading delusions through the sky
And they promised Angel Liberty she could hold onto them and fly
And leave, at once her plasticine roses behind!
All that bitter wine spilt, and all the minutes wasted
All those days spent hunting, all those people left wanting
She could fly again, LORD, and see the stars!
And like a real cigarette, she breathed in, hard
But nobody told her she would lose her spark
And that her neon would buzz out,
like how they looted old Kowloon
and turned Moscow into a fool
blinking as the shells covered all the old east
because they won. and they would make it all gone
so they could push their dream west
toward a fake and plastic dawn.

Now a wingless woman, like she always wanted
the aeroplanes dropped Liberty on some dusty old island
at the mouth of the East River
to stare westward at a new and boundless world
forever and ever and ever and ever.

But nobody told her they would strip her bare
or beat her like they did. Or that she’d corrode there, as the salty air
washed her tungstens and fluorescents a wilted white
as she’d discover the meaning of nothing and
something, some self-evident truths
and that she’d sing only songs she could never fully believe
and that she’d become ordinary.
and that the sky those men sold her? It’d be made of plasticine, too,
the same old plasticine that plopped when she struck her crown
against the ramparts of those twin colossal caverns on Church and Cortlandt
while tumbling from the aerosphere
with her arms thrown up and strangely northward
farther north, even, than her seventh subway line
pushing three short of the forty-ninth, where she saw the old promise
and, at last, FREEDOM, maybe. oh, maybe.
maybe one day, oh, maybe, maybe.

Petals and petals of plasticine, preacherless
Blanketed the soft and iridescent dirt
And the LORD left Liberty feathered and fatherless
Cut her wings and unveiled her in a wet and muddied shirt.