(here, we move like music from foreign countries--
waltzing as baritones, meandering casually
through languages that we don't speak,
listening to a black-and-white earshot
become something less abstract
as its outlines are rectified;
its negative spaces filled with color,
by what might be lyrics embedded in radio waves,
or emigrants from faraway lands and disinterested parties.
these diplomats embrace our bastardized sing-alongs,
doubtlessly seeing them for the mash of heartfelt gibberish
that we know them in our throats to be...
imperfect, and hopefully less callous than chorus.)

of course,
we liked to think we'd have done as much for them,
if our guttural hymns ever traced back the same routes
in the opposite direction.
but then we found ourselves fused to one another,
and to the systematically crumbling architecture
that identified everything west of the waking life meridian
in moments like what we imagined this one to be.
we knew that the way back was whichever way we chose,
but it was the postponement of decisions
that brought us there in the first place.

we always said it would be better
to be a whisper in the slipstream,
than a scream on the stopwatch,
but we knew that we couldn't stay there forever,
and that kids can't raise themselves.

(and yet...

09/24/2010

Posted on 09/24/2010
Copyright © 2024 V. Blake