Dead fish do not move.
They lay there,
Dead.

Dead fish do not breathe,
They lay there,
Dead.

Dead fish do not speak.
They lay there,
Dead.

But the dead fish do wander.
They wander around fish heaven,
Or fish hell.

Dead fish's minds, lasting longer than their physical bodies do,
Explore crevices of the universe that people aren't even familiar with.
Well, at least not people from Earth.

Dead fish not only wander, but they do this thing that sounds like wander and is spelled like wander but is called "wonder."
Their minds forever wonder about things.
Like seaweed, ah the good ol' days of eating seaweed.

Or maybe dead fish wonder about what life is like now that they are gone.
They might wonder if it's raining, or if it's sunny.
But they're fish, so what the hell matters if it's raining or sunny?

You see, dead fish also do this thing.
It sounds much like wander and wonder but it's different.
The thing is "nothing."

Well, I assume "nothing" would sound like the words "wander" and "wonder" to a dead fish.

Considering dead fish can do nothing.
They just lay there,
Dead.

But we are not dead fish.
We are alive people, well at least some of us.
We can do things.

Like ride a rollercoaster, or eat a sandwich.
We can watch televisions shows probably longer than most other human beings can.
We can write poetry books that only five and a half people will read.

(One of those hits home for this author.)

We can go out and live lives livelier than those dead fish.
We can live for those dead fish.
We can wander and wonder and do nothing all at the same time.

We are all given life to live and lives to breathe life into.
Alive humans and dead fish.
At one point in time, we all have the opportunity to be someone who does something maybe even with somebody.

Alive humans and dead fish.
Dead humans and alive fish.
Alive humans and alive fish.
Dead human and dead fish.

Creatures have beautiful and blank canvases on which they can spill beautiful masterpieces on.
Or even blank masterpieces.

It just depends on who you're asking to paint you a picture.
An alive human, or a dead fish.

Both have some type of story to tell.

Chiuso tra cose mortali
(anche il cielo stellato finirà)
perché bramo Dio?

What is it about loose eyelashes
That prompts wofty wishes;
Are they heaven’s kisses
In disguise?

We all want to lift our eyes
Above the cloak of disguise
Even if it may compromise
The facade, and authenticity’s surprise.

This world is concrete;
In Western buildings and streets,
In the here-and-now, we can flee
And dismiss lofty things as absolute.

But we are meaning-makers,
We are constant risk-takers.
We are pursuers for magic’s sake,
And may our quest we foolheartedly take.

These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis.
They grew their toes and fingers well enough,
Their little foreheads bulged with concentration.
If they missed out on walking about like people
It wasn't for any lack of mother-love.

O I cannot explain what happened to them!
They are proper in shape and number and every part.
They sit so nicely in the pickling fluid!
They smile and smile and smile at me.
And still the lungs won't fill and the heart won't start.

They are not pigs, they are not even fish,
Though they have a piggy and a fishy air --
It would be better if they were alive, and that's what they were.
But they are dead, and their mother near dead with distraction,
And they stupidly stare and do not speak of her.

Low horizon sun
Slips across a polished floor
February sky

We are not survivors.
we are residue.

the soot that lingers
on collapse's last tongue.

entropy's loiterers—
spiteful, unfinished.
neurons in feedback.
systems with no gods.

the architects left
when the scaffolds imploded.
we cradle their blueprints
like scripture in ash.

rebuild?
with what breath?
with what myth?
our dreams are famine-shaped.

nirvana is a severance package.
emptiness sold
in velvet robes.
a silence that never asked
about wreckage.

so we sharpen our vowels.
scribe ruin in elegy.
chant hymns for dead logics.
leave witness marks
in the marrow of this glitch.

we were not chosen.
we remained.