He put his head on the table
And announced
That it would stay there
Until someone spilled
The truth about
The silence that was stolen
When he was 14 years old
Standing on a box to
Reach his workbench
In the rapturous brass cacophony that was
The screaming lifting shop of Victorian horrors
Breathing fire into metal dragons
That survived the lightning
And asynchronous overhead motors
Sirens
Heat
And Thor’s Hammer
Forever smashing down on
The sunlit faces of awestruck wonder
Until hope was battered to a pulp
And replaced by a laconic godless thrift
And bloody memories of abandoned equality