Shares like the facets of some chandelier
On last night’s game or show rose in the din
Of aviary voices, impossible to distinguish.
We signed names to the clipboard
For the Fire Authority. It was only a bluff.
Yet the fake location seemed real enough.
The elevators for once got to touch our buttons
As we left, ut turba, trying to return
To desks once thought too brutal to endure.
Each floor was a different frequency.
We saw the consequence of every possibility,
Every timeline flashed its bulb of memory:
The nuclear clean containment zone,
The timeless brand with receptionist only,
The ghost law firm still pending an appeal,
The million-dollar views of an empty suite
Flipped, hipped and staged within a beat of life,
As if on deadline to unveil what can't be right,
These never-before conceived-to-be realities
That easily co-exist with our own, albeit unknown
As most of the universe seems to be.
And there it is, Vates, the Parnassus Floor,
Where piquant muses cattily instruct crows
Who drop artwork for some tax break they don't know of,
Spend their break room moments moaning
How poetry's obscure because people still pretend
They don't understand (and so loathe) it
When really all they do not know
Is why the poet wrote it -- to show, as now,
How intention is all on the poem,
As I learn when I'm back at my desk, in wonder
How to make this experience fit my belief, not seeing
How things only make sense when they can't.
