that we should sell our time for wages,
us here wrapped
in cellophane—lacking
the skills necessary
to provide substantial value
to a company, its coarse
ideology penetrating
the skin. Our dead don’t
return, so we keep
things as totems: here, there’s
an alone-ness to things,
to objects, like our imprinted
selves. Retreating
into a verbal sphere, at least
try looking over
the edge toward the archetypes,
a swarm of giddy
lunatic illuminate holy
spectators who write
a kind of gloss, echoing, ‘We
want devils to exorcise…’
Today still has to make sense
but it all greens up
too fast: the whole story
is gilded, the Super Flower Blood
Moon’s multiplier effect,
the sheen of the wind, the tell—
his unblinking eye. Capitalists
taking refuge in the pandemic
chopping wood
before enlightenment,
the young always about to attack—
in a dusty tent
city, near an empty
mall, near the end,
mannequins freely wandering
lost without aisles
but unstuck in time. O,
and our extended days and nights
of uniform bureaucratic bliss…
