…creeping from the inside, blocking the passage
Weakening the vocal impulse to sing, to speak
words to distant places through remote telephones,
recordings, flashes in copper pans, on social media
Posting erratic signals, hypnotic messages to parties
unknown, unbeknownst to me, z, he, she, zhey
Walk in agony on a hot bed of coals through the
preaching of testimonials, 21st century hate style
Imminent, ever-present this odium, never ceasing,
Why? I, crust of earth. I, crusted and crusty,
crumbling, dying. Rebirth, retrack, redo, redux
Unbelievable agony in the face, in your face, face it—
No one is blameless, no one is guilty
Your face isn’t mine
There is a presence made up of joys and agonies
Married together in an unending cycle of violence
Another specter wears a perpetual smile, filled
with love and optimism despite all indications
to the contrary that it might be a downward spiral—
But up and down doesn’t exist in space. Arises now
an ever-evolving/never-ending helix, a universe
with a nucleus, with star-studded arms reaching out
to embrace its neighbors with all its expanse
Is this a shore from which we should retreat?
The paradox of pleasure and pain, this celestial
tickling and biting, this teasing of the engrams,
flows beyond our grasp and reveals the vast,
yet very human enigma—the force of time
