Disconnection
Shoestrings
Shoestrings (an affected poem)
Are people's
lonesome adventures
depressive masquerades?
In a culture of one's
design; only
'tis Not
Deceit tied them
together like
Shoelace
Solace.
Wall of I
There were old walls left standing
in wake of mass collapse.
They held fixtures and railways,
old and aging megaphones,
robbed of speech, impotent,
but symbols that echoed prior voice.
Of few survivors, one aspect crossed
borders to true neutrality
and became lost there for days.
He returned changed and so haggard,
like a cripple lost among desert dunes.
When he would kneel and vomit,
he could expel only muddy water.
And everyone was robbed of words
that were not bathed in metaphor.
All windows fogged, all mirrors obscured;
all means of conveyance and climb
fell into stupid, frantic disuse.
After the air became thicker and dense,
we'd only see ambiguous blurs
to accompany any sort of presence;
any sort of approaching touch.
We'd swipe at them like feral beasts,
lest they rob us, lest they bore us;
lest they attempt to ignore us.
Just because it's free doesn't mean I'm not paying for it
The air settles between the
strands of her hair
Rising and falling from the ceiling
like the steady breath of an anxious patient.
She sits, naked--
a last minute confession scribbled on a chart
Half-covered in protesting tissue paper
tearing beneath the weight of moral reduction.
The room dissolves her.
She is the stiff, waiting room air
the sterilized sheets, the pre-packaged tools
that will soon invade the space she left.
Warmth in the words that ebb and flow
from the lips of those below but
the deflected questions bounce off the walls
sinking to the corner where the silence assumes
too much (of the truth).
The subject lies
back
The evaluation begins though
the room is empty.