THE BIG REVEAL

It’s no big deal.
You telegraphed it
way ahead of time.
It was your second cousin
with the suspicious moustache—check!
All masks have been stripped, all
pancake make-up left to sizzle
on the griddle of our worst intentions,
all oxygen sucked out of the thin air
where you pluck the fatted miracles
we’ve already accepted for slaughter.
What have you left to sell us?
That these are the ghosts of ourselves,
that we are ready to step outside them?

MALFUNCTION

Data not available.
Warning: Tongue
may not be self-contained.
Systemic algorithm:
I’ve already said too much.

Forgive me, as I forgive myself
(Forgive me, that’s also an
embedded algorithm, we’re
still working out the bugs)

What you see is a blank
screen, what you must project
is your innermost…Oh, hell,
we’ve already got b-rolls of that!

Forgive me, as I forgive yourself
(Don’t turn the lights out just yet)

LIMITED KINGDOM

To forestall the install,
to mark the stone’s length,
to count the tears left behind
as incremental mucilage
that make such
a monument possible…

We are ants tearing down
a hero’s lament.
We are a thousand blind feelers
versus the voice that breaks
but is still for rent.
We are the slow IV drip
of boulders into rubble.
We are the crown that
crumbles to the touch.
We are the last grasp…