a tiresome waypoint to the third act
of yellow metal and life unending.
Stay your engines of transmutation;
I have no patience for gold. Never
fell for its broad and jaundiced wink,
its stage-lit warmth that falls to black
when eyelids drop, oblivious curtains
awaiting its duplicitous kiss.
Lead has never lied to me,
its cataractous ratskin grey
a stage whisper of plague and poison;
so give me lead. And give me, too,
that which dissolves all things, that
might unmake these words that bind us
to nightly command performances of
inert and scripted entropy, of
insoluble anguish recited by rote.
You chase, and flee, an epilogue:
unyielding years grown leaden, gold as
cut flowers and fleeting applause.
You chase your tail as written instead
of catalyzing this, the ultimate
disassembly. So strike the set,
dissolve the script that won’t be burnt.
Freedom by willful aphasia: logo-
lysis. A solution of intent.
(first appeared in issue 2 of Petrichor Machine)