aggregate

Enough years go by and you know whether the world wants you. Enough years get past you, the world won’t know you at all. The decrees of the lock step horrors, the proclamations of these deficient little gods, rise and fall like any tide. The boxes check that match the climate. The alignment of the constellations, the distance from the sun. The rest only spit and whistles. The rest only the racket of cicadas, the clamor of crickets. The aggregate chatter of any given species ultimately mostly noise.

I am all shiftlessness and dereliction. The idle hands of hyperbole and rhetoric. The scorch marks and blast patterns of recklessness, the drag marks and debris of routine. The bare bulb and the green headphones, blessings and blank spaces where my enthusiasms used to be. The feints and digressions identity requires, the poor functionality of meat and spook excreting some attempt at a self. The rigor of the animal, the customary alibi. Crowns and gowns and sacks of skin. A room to keep these feelings in.

We are held tight by the moment, we squirm and squeal at the added injuries and insults, spew our excuses as again and again the hammer comes down. Tell the hurricane about your station. Tell the tiger of your destiny.  I am a knot tied between blood and breathing, a crowded roundabout of roads and trails and intermittent doors. The sentences we serve at the altar of abstraction paid out of our hides. The earth is the crunch of numbers; the sound of accounts settled.