with ancestral murals carved into your back
The Thousand: living off their borrowed breath
sprint to Hades, quick as skeletons
no flight, no fight, no fear, no death.

 there are some ideas bigger than your name
and i pray that i may dissolve to such strength
every day, itching this splitting shell
pulsing, painfully, in time 
with the hearts of those slain before me
and those who will surely come after
most powerfully of all, those 
with which we stand together

right 

now.

we, the beacon
the torch-bearers, the soothsayers
the boxers and the butchers
and regular, loving brothers
fathers, sisters, mothers
family much closer than blood
though in blood, we swear.