dead bang

Broad daylight and nothing to see here. Middle of the morning, dying slow and painful. It feels like old news because it’s variations on a theme. It feels like forever, but it’s only been decades. The day all a haze as the earth exhales, house sparrows in the yard and Canadian geese taking to the sky. The words are running out, the returns diminishing a little more each day. What little remains will be shit all over and thrown away. It’s what it takes to keep me in my place.

The afternoon reaches up, the dampened earth, the bitter yield. It grasps the heart between its teeth and bites down, just enough for the sharp stab and the dull tremble, the pain and the weakness threaded through the husk. Hands that only hold each other, the light a little less as the vision continues to diminish, the ache and the ache and the ache again. Nothing is okay and nothing is enough and the next to nothing left me may as well be a bullet to the dome. 

The words written down say it all, the proof again and again. All for the echo chamber, all for the long monologue. Dying poorly is a spectator sport, though a meager one. What mercy do gawkers and voyeurs expect after the state and the corporations’ cruelties, let alone the goons and perpetrators of this violence? Nothing is off the table any longer, nothing is out of bounds. Tuck all your darlings in tight. Soon you’ll wake and they’ll be gone. Dead bang done.