there are bystanders
and there are activists,
the ones who care enough
to attempt some futile rebellion
by taking a seat on the wrong side
of the couch.
it doesn't sound like much,
but it is.

lately,
your hands are always
on that bottle of glue.
I guess it's better
than a bottle
of something else.

look at me,
the famished beggar
quenched and grateful
and silent
in consumption.

I do take hold of it
and clutch it in my palm
even if you can't see it.

and then, the impact.
it comes quickly
in lambent fractals
an unsettling, gleaming mess
of lightheadedness
and holds me in paralysis.

It doesn't belong to me.
it never did.
and there is still that guilt
buried deep within;
it howls in the night
and whispers incessantly
in the afternoons.

it is dry gluttony
incarnate in the hardest
of gazes, of nights in indigo
and in the softest
of ratted fabrics.

look, I remembered for once.
that's a step
in the right direction
but I've still got so far to go.

don't you know
you have so little time,
in the blink of an eye,
the flutter of a lash
you'll be insipid ash.

you've got to go
it's better you're blinded
by crimson sand and salt
than you stay and wait
for a hurricane.

the torrents, these downpours
but we all stay the same --
we refuse to move away
from the shore.