They put their names in marble.
I put mine where breath can move.
Let the weather come.
Let the walls come loose.

New tower downtown with the rich man’s name,
gold door shining in a bad-news frame.
Lobby got hush like a church for cash,
floor so clean it don’t know ash.
Men in dark suits shake hands with history,
smile for the flash, call it victory.
But I seen dust get brave in a window seam,
seen rust write back on a limousine.
Bronze turns green when the rain leans in,
stone gets tired of remembering.
Every statue begs for a longer day,
but the pigeons preach what the people won’t say.
I got one page and a pen gone thin,
one black line where the light gets in.
If they ask what stayed when the money went cold,
tell them ink outlives stone.

Ink outlives stone.
Let the towers fall.
You can break the wall,
but the words walk home.
Gold gets old.
Names get overthrown.
When the dust takes all,
ink outlives stone.

I don’t need my face on a courthouse stair,
don’t need brass hands pointing nowhere.
Don’t need saints cut clean from clay,
don’t need crowns with the teeth on display.
Give me one line with a pulse underneath,
one real wound with a room to breathe.
Give me late-night truth in a cracked phone note,
thumbprint smudge where the sentence broke.
I write for the kid with the locked jaw tight,
reading by the fridge in the blue-white light.
I write for the mother with the mail stacked high,
for the brother who laughed so he wouldn’t cry.
If my bones go quiet and the drums don’t call,
let the page keep knocking through a shut-down wall.
I don’t chase forever like a rich man’s ghost—
I leave heat in the lines I wrote.

Ink outlives stone.
Let the towers fall.
You can break the wall,
but the words walk home.
Gold gets old.
Names get overthrown.
When the dust takes all,
ink outlives stone.

Burn the hall.
Flood the shelf.
Salt the ground.
Praise yourself.
Time got teeth.
Time got hands.
Time eats steel.
Time drinks land.
But one voice slips through the smoke,
small as a match, still hard to choke.
If the whole world closes its throat,
I’ll be the line it almost spoke.

Ink outlives stone.
Let the towers fall.
You can break the wall,
but the words walk home.
Gold gets old.
Names get overthrown.
When the dust takes all,
ink outlives stone.

No crown in the room.
No statue alone.
Just a page still warm
where the hand let go.