For want of phylum, a beast strode out

into the coliseum of self-image.

Having slept without a countable care,

knowing peace is good meat.

Among the famous nows of non-doers,

religiously in alternate futures.

Swear that you remind them of someone,

or something they'd rather not be

reminded of.

Perhaps they've already been alive too

long, but not ahead of any timeline.

Which is always no one's concern, these

bodies that will have to go: number three

(beyond biology).

How many would opt for a slap on the

*** on their way out, to commerate their

way in?

That would be like a coroner pinning

open someone's eyes, & telling them it's

impolite to stare.

Simple truths are too much knowledge,

whereas all other sentient life dies

gracefully.

This beast under-lives & over-dies,

because simple truths are too much

knowledge.

Follow that thought wherever it goes,

with your neighbor's mind--then have a

conversation with a stray cat.

When apathy to apathy came black snow

on a desert, wind forbade sand to

search for it.

Birds fell down & fell down from the top

of the heap, cut to the horizon.

which fell down.

The skyline raises its hands & holds its

crotches.

a little while back, underground--a

woman became a torch that onlookers lit

their phones with.

'That's nothing--you should see this

nothing, wait...someone's calling me.'

An upstanding standoff, as subway cars

bumble motion between flickering lights.

Aligning with cars ahead--as a

momentous wave rolls throughout.

Every other face becomes another way to

look at things--as not to be overwhelmed.

Between every other face, you become

someone else's other way to look at

things.

While an old leather drum lowers heads,

whose irregular beat they impose--just to

feed off disharmony.

A surge of memes going viral, canceled

into existence--everybody will either be

too early or too late.

As his lips ripple, he's not on them.

How a ghost is denied intimation--

presuming to speak for him.

Now listens intently, understanding

that silence isn't pretending not to

speak.

That sort of painful loquacity.

Then there are words that speak to

silence--which silence may or may

not speak.

Silence is a word, a word is silence--

their speaking out of turn can **** the

ghost.

The colossi of oblivion derive their

stature from what cannot be followed.

Twilight's pallored collapse gripped by a

leathery leaf, a pair of checkout keys on

a blear nightstand.

A mouth private about age gargles with

salt, then drags slippers away.

Lone headlights go off into a self-effacing

whoosh, an incomplete: bear in mind.

Then a heaviness is quietly told to be

seated, as if by a priest.

When some diabolical cleverness works

garlic cloves into a brain, as one grins

like a holiday lamb.

Evils that slur the speech of sleep, eight

hours of crime scene photos--fighting off

The Prince of Peace.

Where the colossi migrate as a state of

being, bring forth signs & break off into

smaller groups.

Until all that is left, can't be followed.

A pregnant woman smells a *** of

lavender, while running her fingers in

mince meat.

A gold crucifix's vintagey over-gleam, as

it pokes her cleavage line.

While cameras follow her sigh to a copse

outside the kitchen window--whose

distant image shrinks with signified

exhalation.

Now she's on a cable rerun no one is

watching.

Something fidgets at such odds--like that

can't be, & what's not happening will

come back with avengance.

A fictional character that memorized her

lines, & acted out of character.

As the scene called for her to act out of

character--but ended up being her true

self.

Non-acting in a scene written around her

maternity leave.

Filmed during the seventies, the set had

a lot of MASH-green, as if put together

from a present day thriftshop.

Believably lived-in, the dizzyingly

unplaceable scent-stain of home-cooked

meals, what people used to smell like.

A far more forgiving zeitgeist--whereas

even her true self seemed like subpar

acting.

This particular episode was at peak

viewership, what force drew all that

free time?

Perhaps the same force that plays its

rerun, at the same time it airs in a

parallel universe.

Coincidentally--her son is among those

not watching the rerun he bulged her

stomach in.

a pronounced profile without pensivity--

turned sideways, like that.

an installed idiot, an endless green

stretch, beyond curious but not curious.

imagine no further than the following:

his mind consists solely of a thought

that will not come to it.

only the lingering impression of having

to recall itself--seven Sundays in a week.

what would it be to look for the light on,

without knowing it?

it would feel like you're always about to

die, without knowing what death is.

what if such a one was charged enough

with impending death, to suddenly recall

more than the mind.

facing forward now, like that--as would

one about to recreate a week.