glowering suntrails on brick-and-mortar

fences. scoped from the filigree of

fourth-floor garage parking. settled in

significance by the clockhand machine.

it creates meaning. it settles things.

it’s settled, then.

i am gouged and excoriated,

there is a chunk missing,

an absence; something there,

then nothing, a valley, a dessicated

riverbed. making meaning.

settling in.



it used to be more often,

it used to be primary,

the machine spitting out

spittle, sludge, steam.

the contracting of data points,

the herding of events, here,

you’ll do, poke it through with

pushpins, up on the board now,

look at it, beautiful, a monument

to the great hypothesis. everyday

proven. a host. a wafting smoke.

a horrible miasma, concentrated

but a gas expands to fill its container,

so they choke, I choke them,

I pin them in place, I look down

from my haughty filigree, I slake

my need for certainty, the machine rings,

I am unfreed.



scant few leads will leak from this

fortress. a wall, a board, a perfect

crystalline prism, pyramidic, labyrinthine.

I can give you the run-around until

we’re both dead in the sand.

I have infinite defensive merit.

even though I want to blame.

I can hold up forever.

some process of state change,

some rage, steaming and

sublimating my shame.

these toxic particles percolating,

this petrichor radiating

out of my flaring pores.



I lied, for whose shame is it,

anyway? my shame, hilarious,

barbaric. My disappointment.

My anger. My bitterness at the

prospect of living another day.

My thumbtacks in the cork,

an insistence on substantiating

that which I know to be true.

To show to whom?

To you?

Oh, you’ll be alright.

Look on the bright side;

you already know what’s behind

every door. What’s there to be

afraid of?



So you say you want to live

for something. And maybe I

did too, some point, some

pinprick in the timeline.

Wanted, maybe, once. Some

juncture, some change in the

seasons, the construction of a

machine, the fundamental order

of things. But I didn’t get to,

and neither will you. Hey,

chin up, you’ll be alright.

It’s just like this,

passing time 'till we die.



the place that contains the list of the containers of words