A Sestina for the Modern Age

Riddled with this fate, handfed spoonfuls of drum beats. 

Thump, Thump, Thump, Thump, never too far, never too close. 

Pondering the dark night dressed in orange. 

I’ve never met a man I didn’t adorn. 

This drumbeat might never excuse itself out.  

I might die like this, in limbo with my maker. 

I’ve met my maker.

Personified infinity; savage beasts tickle their drum beats. 

Sanctified only by their blistering beads crying out  

into the stone-cold night, melancholy nightmare, underworld close. 

Belly of the beast wrapped in bacon. Stuffed with fried cheese, humans frequently adorn 

because many things are better with fried cheese while the streetlamps are glistening orange. 

The world is written in dopamine and the fellowship falls under orange 

streetlamps while my feet find a rhythm unlike my maker. 

The world casts spells into shadows. We all pray and adorn 

every last concept the upper class can stamp into their drum beats. 

The Victorian Era never fell out of fashion. Contemporary slavery feels all too close. 

Lest we grant our thoughts and prayers onto the dollar bill. There's no way out  

of this Frankenstein gone awry. The beast granting wishes out 

to anyone willing to join the unholy war of agent orange. 

Sell yourself to the man downstairs and pretend God's close. 

Proper nouns galore, all in the name of our maker. 

Spitting, sputtering, spewing, spattering drum beats. 

Thump, Thump, Thump, Thump, blistering bops to adorn 

this Freaky Friday we’re all calling Sunday. Walk like rosary and let your blood adorn 

the streets. The reigns aren’t in the hands of you and me, but a figure far out 

there, beguiling the rainforests, cell blocks and middle east with swift drum beats. 

I’m afraid of the day when a burnt orange 

sun sets on a world so far from our hands, we beg our maker 

to undo the rapture and undo the setting sun, only to find God was close 

to our chests on the stone-cold nights as we stuffed our faces with fried cheese, close 

to our chests as we made the world bleed, and our actions didn’t adorn 

a figure far away, but a hand and a fist. A maker 

we held up in the parade begging black lives to matter, and crying out 

for a world to be better. Burnt orange 

suns are drum beats 

in our own chests. Drum beats close, 

glowing orange, as I adorn 

the world inside out, as my own maker.