California Poppy Autocue

Calories and curio pagesmiths
Ornette Coleman hyphen wars
waltzing to the free notes
that barricade fires
in the memo engrossed
charming, instilled
wooden fretted agreeableness

singing in a cramped style,
“You are not my tune, my page,
or my pageantry. Along the valerian
roots to what attraction and demise
we take what is important and
disregard the rest, mistaking our
own edges of sensitivity, as the test,”

and relying those demands to our
executing functions, where birds prey
and the spirits of our past
neglect the angel’s army.

Where the weight of this impassioned plea
harms the backs of both the received
and the receiver.