wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

Here's one of Mills's poems:

A SPY IN THE KINGDOM OF SILENCE

Stalking the strange walls of the subway line
we find the subterranean wilds defiled
by criminals of the creative kind
for in this city
of sin and obscenity
scrawling graffiti
is called a crime

Who wrote these furtive words?
some hideous fiend
with a spray paint can between his teeth
a frantic tongue
licking the grimy tiles
a stab in the darker dark
of timeless transit light
seeking to speak a guilty heart
behind the lines of speechless defense
the spoken curse of a spy
in the kingdom of silence

Lawmakers ask
what can such creatures have to say
untrained animals
bred of the city’s decay

The bandits answer with a name an epithet a threat
words that would be whispered
beneath a better man’s breath
but here stripped naked sprayed
without any redeeming deceit or pretense
because desperation dictates the acts
of a spy in the kingdom of silence

The marks they make
these city scars
carved in colors on its
numb and frozen face
branded blurred and fading
looped and whorled
though buried beneath the screaming streets
still touch a nerve
disturb the sleep
of dreamless despair
of the more than ten million
dreams’ defeats

In a real dream
of the nightmare kind
that is my hand
scribbling some outlaw sign
shaping the symbols as fast as it can
these very words
a prayer revealed
in the racketing dark
with the shriek of the wheels
as the steel throws sparks

But there’s nothing there
in the end I find
the words gouged out of my heart of hearts
spell emptiness
an echoed blank
a spasm scrawl
it makes no sense
I’ve been with the enemy far too long
a spy
in the kingdom of silence

copyright 2007 Paul L. Mills