Words Drowned by Fireworks

Josh Zimmerer

March 24, 2021

-for Cait Sith

This is the song
they play

as they send you
stumbling through
those gilded chambers:

all harps gliding
through accompaniment,
their ostinato a barber’s pole;

glockenspiel and oboe conspiring
a melody that rests easy

in the liver; Jesus,

the way the strings triumph
around your descent,
as if fanfare can only be done
from a safe distance.

The planet doesn’t need you
to protect it too.

Someone out there,
a considerable length away
from this tomb’s miraculous
demise, could do
something as well, anything.

This is an idiot’s job after all.

But I know you can’t hear me
through this song’s thick reckoning,

the way it turns minor
only briefly,
only as the screen turns to white:

although,
nothing final
is ever called final.

What I’m saying
is there’s plenty
of stuffed toys
like your body around.

You’ll come back,
you puppet within a puppet
within a puppet, ridiculous
and all.

Because they ask you to.
I ask you to. Every time

I reboot your life,
I need you to tumble
once more

so I can taste
a childhood I’ve barely

forgotten.