Crows and cameras are on top of the lamps.
Three seagulls fly the grey.
Under the red pill moon the news
Takes a horsewoman’s risk of truth
When so many bodies are buried
Like their lives meant more than they did.
No crosses to disclose that they died for truth
Makes what’s obscured felt, more palpable.
Yet there’s a veil,
Timelines preserved in their chambers,
Same coffee in different rooms with different tastes
And no samples allowed outside.
The time to partake of others’ experience
Has collapsed on the wheel of blood
And the vacuum tube of what they waited for you
To see … But you were always free to choose
Your avatar, and to make it what you were.
The whole of the singing turns in crystal distortion
Because the note would be the same
In the endless echo of space, without the reverb
Of times and places landed like GPS,
Kin to the roving bands that marched through
Danbury, one after the other playing
The same tune but dissonant with itself.
No rooms except your own shine in blue.
No oatmeal but your own greets your hands.
You can play the game of being other people
But it ends with you were stolen from, not stealing.
At parties we talk about this,
What we did for other people’s ears,
The horror of seeing ourselves as we are
Too real to understand …
Like the homeless man with the Raiders cap
Walks his dog, revels in the stoppage
To savor the pee, rather than look
Anywhere near the sky.
