These are the times when I find myself
in the shoes of the people who are supposed to be dead.
Those who lived through those times near and far
doomed to remain good until they are fully effective.
Speak.
Your thoughts probe the land
of the dead where the poets wait
(who cannot teach you how to sing)
Speak. Would you rather sit
Marking your own apoptosis,
like listening to the music of clocks
It’s the second shadow of my third soul
that makes me so still.
All my companions are reincarnated as white lilies
in the gardens of the middle class,
like the hum of a refrigerator brings life
to a springtime tableau.
To whom shall I speak?
Are all living things clocks
to you? One drifts past you,
white hands fluttering, eyes
like delicate blooming things.
Yes, they all come jerking up and down the stairs and
twitching around the pond and the café like ants.
All things can be recycled, even and including
the plastic water bottles discarded on the ground
beneath the bin, but they are just vessels,
and those who have drunk walk under the sun,
laughing at lilies, deaf to the hum of the refrigerator.
Their eyes are glass.
Sweet smooth glass. Light blown, sun drunk,
All living things are clocks until it is time,
I can hear the sounds their hands make when they move
but they cannot hear mine.
It is because you do not speak.
All my breaths are meant to curl my tongue always.