impossible
more silence would cancel
out the silence, until
the salt and pepper ants
from empty airwaves
became a kind of earworm
pretend there is an echo-
location that leads us
through the static hiss.
pretend that what's between
the lines is morning sick;
and that the streetlights
are in a fetal position forever,
unable to come to term.
daydreaming, we somniloquize;
each Shakespeare a deaf con
on "read" alert, left on "read" alert.
weathered
the clouds keep repeating
their self portrait, in a sort of dementia
that won't remember us, either.
you watched their anti-
evolution until "blue" was
a shape, always beside
itself in its geometry.
the foliage, like a blackboard
full of goodbye messages, chalked up
our nostrils with its erasure,
lecturing us on the virtues of the fall,
on moving along without a thought.
we pretend that
we are more than
a clenched fist
slowly leaking.
the sound almost
names itself
"liquid mortis",
but waits for
introductions,
and waits.
somewhere, a gaze
jaywalks through
a soul for the first time;
irises wane into
a gibbous of green
a chartreuse smile
flashing back, until
the colors invent
a new way to blind.
you'll draw a grid
on a scrapbook page
around the shrapnel of
your best shots, shot;
kodak moments tic-tac-toe'd,
divided by an algebra
where the x's and o's
always cancel, equal zero.
even Orwell would be
impressed, you think,
by the way we blackwhite shoeboxes,
in closets that could have
their own national anthem, with
hugs and kisses that could have
their own national anthem.