The Colony

I found myself a new world

Sailed around its ring

I wrought myself a country

And I crowned myself its king

I made myself religion

Carved Christ in ivory

I deemed an airtight Sunday

To justify to myself all the bleeding

I clawed myself a nation

And I shopped its waterways

I crack the dirt for smoking out

Rhymes of energy

I gouge myself a pipeline

I dig myself a mine

I take myself a forest

To sap the growing up of your shrine

I’ve halted ghosts from dancing

Swept the prayers from the last ones left

And I kept the drums from breathing

It’s I that warped the blankets' weft

I that warp the blankets' web

To speak in some such candor

I rip from the condor’s wing

I feed on loving bodies

And take the land from them to stanch their living

Take the land from them to stanch the living