the heat infects everything, muggy rain batter churning through murk

i close my hand and
   cut the fingers on the lip


  we left the forms on the third floor, which
is the fourth floor, really, english standard  i
  always forget that

the generator hums
  they're     doing something with the piping
     sounds like drills
        but probably isn't


we had to close up early when the vents broke and
   water gushed all over the computers, washed away the paper screens, we were
  told to vacate, but I just stand, you
                in baby blue  slacks, poke me   but i’m too busy  
staring at my bleeding hand


the envelope was addressed here but i didn’t recognize the name,
no, wait, the other; it was to someone
         i knew but
                                         not from around here, i   think


   there is much     and i

fall,  though cushion and sponge
          big eggplant river

              remember when you were eighteen months and you ran and fell into the mirror? under a deep conviction that that was how you passed through, into the image beyond? but instead you just saw it shatter, and it gashed your arm up all the way up along the metal hinge? still have the scar, right? nowadays you don't trust reflections; you're always instead looking for that jagged lip, that latent violence of the edge, it's
   probably a good attitude, really


in the mirror    shattered birds,
               break their necks on  bad design  
too pathetic for tragedy
   don’t worry, we’re all self-hating narcissists here, you’ll
feel right at home-
     chuggin  on woolf and plath
           only seek wisdom from self willed death
       it’s an indulgent bias
             but the living are all such ******* suits, man

  just, look, how
        they are speaking, now, in a row, a flat screen, projected, and words filter out. the faces are blur, the words are static,  but the form is discernible. accusations. charges. prosecute; indite. plaintiff paper wrung. burn the body and pin it to itself. axiomatized sin. society as the codification of a hatred too bored to sustain itself.  i ask for a glass of water, but the words only form wheeze through the strain. Quiet. Your turn to speak is later. i'd run away, but i'm invested now. gotta see how it ends. the screen retches on. do you recognize this letter? i ask, but the words are wheeze-


sorry, sorry, i know, even if it's all about you, i'm just carrying on about-
   yeah.
       Well!
                Then!
                          So!
   Do
           do you-
                        do you prefer to just embrace it?  wear it out, burn it all up at once?
     the repulsive husk at the end is just confirms that there was something prior, after all. death is affirmation as well as negation.
         or           do you prefer to hold it close, hide it away in dark spaces? i mean, that's fine too. a candle rarely lit never burns out. and only a few flickers are all you need for a wax seal; to drip your mark over sheathed words-

        maybe it's the smell. it was sent from my hometown, after all. the name was never important, but the winter and coal. The olfactory of old factories. sorry. i know, but i couldn't resist  
                         how we'd

we'd laugh in silence,
moths flooding through broken glass,
bodies only figured
       as sparks in orbit
     against the amber light
  always
     all too light
light light
  and colour.

weightless as paper
               a paper weight,   wait-
   thrown through a window?
no,   too
                 long ago to recall


  the post office says they'll take it back to the sender. they can retry, repeat. it'll find it's way from there. it's okay, your responsibility is over; hand it over, leave your body at the door. as long as it's still sealed; as long as the envelope's not too frayed to cut, it's still good enough to exchange. interchangeable.   i run, still clutching  

  and   they,     funnel us out,
river down the concrete stairway,
  those echoing closet tones,
to the street below,
  and stare back at the mess, they're
   putting out cones,
                       and handing out ponchos,
for the typhoon rain of summer bare


and- and that's it. so what do you do? it's not entirely rhetorical. what can you do? do you
      just
   scrawl a note, explaining yourself -everything this misplaced message became to you,- over the outside, and send it off? forcibly insert yourself into the conversation? and just, imagine, project some understanding, some insight, that they'll get from it, that you provided?
    just break the seal? you can't open it, can you? it was never meant for you. hell, what answers would be found there, in words for another?
  but   perhaps-
    perhaps   there are secret codes; messages, not in the words themselves, or the letters, but only to be found and understood by the eavesdropper, the guilty. that outside, absent third party, on the boundary of it all; just gazing in, standing there, speechless, beyond the mirrors glare

    
      but that's just fantasy