the despair born out of these translucent weeks
books and song and knowledge
have no power in this illuminated haze
running my hands along walls
polished and leading nowhere

confined to this immaculate cell
like those nordic prisons
that you don't even want to leave
the comfort of captivity
ringing in my ear like an audible parasite

the city is no better
ghostly faces just like mine
but what hides in their eyes
is a tyranny that they will never know
the hateful foundation of success

but in the real world i stick out
my naïve face and pampered body
deserved condescension
i cannot know these people
because of what my people have done

drifting through the vacuum
too far from the power of attraction
cosmic bodies cling to each other
and i thrash and struggle
while the omniscient nothing engulfs me

eyes out the window
a hulking metal archangel
thunders across the
mocking blue sky
just a glimmer of white
the purity of image
distance
silence
betrays the emptiness
the malaise of its contents
as it is consumed by
the passive clutches
of stratocumulus vapor

glued to the floor
my back sticky with
contempt and
introspection i
sleep and stare and
fantasize of escape
an undoing of the
essential that has
plagued this plane

Pecola's dreams are
mine but it is not my
eyes that are stubborn
it is my brain my
mind my
infinity
that cannot
that refuses to evaporate

the arrogance

oh humankind
terror
fear
suffering
exponential death
we have brought
into this plane

a world
that may be no larger
than my eyes attest

oh humankind
our purposeful waste
dispensable products
people
populations

oh humankind
our sophistry of individuality
greed
power
war
genocide
in the fallacious name of
permanence

oh humankind
we cling to our objects
our love and hate
our righteous insecurities
we claim these as authentic

but we are little more than ghosts
inflicting a blink
a glimmer
of intolerably painful light

while we
these pathetic apparitions
stubborn and feeble
dissipate
into colorless purity

i had a dream
i was holding my brother in
my toothless arms
i could not see
his face
he was breathing
my hand on his back
those heaving breaths
of sleep
silence
solitude

but it was not my brother
not a dream
it was my friend i held
laying on my back as
night terrors
gripped her
clawed her
back into reality

and we could not go back
to sleep
and we did go back
on our promise
and it was beautiful and cumbersome
and my brain raced frantically
just as it always does

distant
she penetrates me through screens
and those nights and
i long
i yearn
i creak
to hold my brother
who never existed
in my arms once more