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In the city of the silent ruins / I walk into the colours of my dreams / what I dream to become sits unseen within the keyboard of my skeleton like computer codes / / every night I search for a discarded part of a sacrifice evaporating outside the homes of those who make it to the city / those who love the city without turning back / those who sacrificed everything to lose everything for the city without knowing the cityscapes / / I am a boy who sighted myself with overripe dreams, my heights lifting the undies of the city in an open field / / here, the city eats with an iron mouth without spitting out the people it eats / gold diggers digging gold but not enough to feed their hungry mouths; call it alchemy / / across the loops of the sky, the early stars shine in bright posture / the gods of city dwellers / the ravenous folks leap into their souls with pieces of the juice they carry with the stones in them. / I couldn’t hold the arms and legs of the city / they are floating dates & are nameless
From the poem “Prayer with the Taste of Stone, IV” in the collection A Taste of Stone by Umar Yogiza Jr.