Everybody eyes the noose, from time to time,
preparing to climb the gallows they built,
over those years of broken hopes and dreams departed,
the steps splintered as the carpenter’s aspirations.
To all and sundry, the escape route looks
like an empty vial of amber plastic,
its unpretentious pellets now
dissolved in spirits of salt and bile.
Some exsanguination of vital fluid or
traumatic end to a highspeed plunge
seems somehow a reduction of violence rather
than an unrestrained plea for dissolution
Everybody eyes the noose and climbs those stairs
the hempen cord sways softly in the breeze of the breath
the executioner some hired gun with the face of the mirror
hidden behind the hooded visage
Hemp
