Take hold of each thumb
And grasp until the snap of its thin spine
Meets your carnivorous ear.
Dig each nail into transparent flesh
To finally feed upon the soundless melody lying beneath.
Parasitic, your eyes engorge the bitter music
Leaking from each wound.

A thousand voices build below the arch of my brow.
And I perspire the words that I am unable to breathe.
So I breathe foreign screams
From a thousand foreign lips
That crawl from my grimace and,
With pity, caress my speechless cheek.
They await, in unity, the joining of my tongues cry
To their brigade of invisible grief.

And still, blanketing my tongue
Is yet another corps of sorrow’s sullen regiment,
Suited in camouflage
And cocking their guns in synchronized lament.

My broken thumbs and torn flesh
Embody the voices of a thousand men,
Bleed the music shed from a thousand mourning fingers.
And yet, my tongue is void of its own cry,
Jailed behind barring lips of silence.
I pray, in mute grief,
Keep hold of me.
Bend the limbs that once gloried themselves in song
Just to reassure my quiet ears
That they are my thumbs you are breaking.