Verse

Here's how things sit: that plasma-fusing sphere
out there's gone far enough atwilt that I
could almost quit psychotically, to spend
my final wealth alighting to the south.

Down there I'd squat in languid gluttony
"to help my health" no doubt, and so it could
help, but not the way to saw and nail my mind
its ship of naught, of ethereal wood.

Now here's a fact: I'll stare into a bulb
like some damn lizard if it means I'll get
to hold my bit together one day more.
For making light, we honour wizards here.

And not just them, but their marketing teams,
all charm and tact, like used boat salesmen vie
to foist you lemons. From the horse's mouth
the unreserved flies, aloft above the truth.

But this bulb is good. More day is good! You know,
I should remember some products are good.
I overbuy this fear of sales. You see:
my dreams were lies until I rose, less woke.

For in my past, if you accept the lore,
there was an age I could not help but cringe,
sad, often thinking: I'd be better broke.
What silly masts! Pointless rope! Bitter ends.

And as if nature weren't enough a test
to see how fast to shit my soul could bend,
or how much rage I'd hoist against myself—
the sea’s relentless with its bitter trends.

Am I complaining? What's the point? I know
I've turned a page, and what was once a chore
becomes a joy. So what's this fear? These words?
Don't I think I'll be earning what's before
me? I react, but still's my sail unset,
as though a toy, another toy, and I
the boy were cast in amber, playing yet—
with no-one up to catch the wind…

He made me breathe funny.

— Roman Roy, Succession

A child, or something something says to call a child
is still in me, binding me to smallness,
the seeming safety of this place.

But there's no safety
still, alone, afraid, and small,
any more than in holding my breath
and waiting, and hoping
that whatever else, everything I do not control,
will happen to move the predators along.

So now the question rears
out of unskilfully punctuated chaos:

What should I do?

(And, as much as metaphors oversimplify
and squash the truth—
as much as I am already doing something,
how should I intend to finish,
to exhale, before I move along?)

Every child, every one
is a structure engine of their mind,
a little realm of attention.
Banding together where they can, doubtless attracted,
perhaps they feel a bit at first as if they could just
(together, mind)
drive out the noise, unwanted.

But in the end, after all, each one will either
wither,
or be free of the illusion of permanency.

In this space so vast and liminal,
slighted, I get slightly criminal—
seizing on today's defection,
ruining some cringe erection.

Elon's sub — or was it, Greta's?
terse — and much too versed in meta,
stressed — obsessed with alpha/beta,
raging — hemorrhaging my data.

On this branch each bird picks up a tic
and talks and talks and keeps god sick
with blue bird flu or some sus shit
behind a mask, before the front of it.

In your face and supercritical,
pointing-psycho-analytical—

frightened, righteous, egotistical,
twisted, traumatized, statistical—

paralyzed and apolitical,
staring down the parasitical

in this space so bare and clinical
marketing our best infections,
mirrors stiffen into cynical
clenching clenching clenching clenching
clenching

I fight, to place in you a piece of me
that might appease the warring wheel of fate,
which treads my heart: the hurtful memory
of a secret self I strain to hate.
I judge you, though I really glance within
to glimpse an image graven in my mind.
Will I, no master painter of your sin,
be damned to pass fresh evidence behind?
Humility approaches by a pace
while ego leaps to lust and soon to pain
so eagerly — will I forget your face,
idolatrous to plunge within again?
Oh sacred patience, lead us to the truth
but let us lose our fear before our youth.