Zoetropia

Too much turn, the market sours
The sweetness of just a grape
Crushed into being. The soiled landscape
Blows dust into our eyes and into our mouths
And settles upon some unsettling thing

Is nothing, but nothing unturned?
When I say to you now, “I am lying”.

That squish, That squash.
Would it all give wash
To the loss fermenting within?
Or the cross lamenting our sin
Would that too, give wash?

With each step something is squelched.

We have arranged our valley like we arrange ourselves
In neat rows of likeness, and we like this arrangement it seems

In the valley of surnames our first name is lost
We yearn to return, but what is the cost?

Would not our nature to change the nature of things
Change even ourselves to miss such things?

Like the spotlight that moves in the darkness of me
I see only the point I am pointed to see
The rest merely rests, intellectually

Or consider Hamlet’s biology
His life constructed chemically
In Shakespeare’s timeless telepathy
We now reserve as memory

I conduct, therefore, myself to be

I walk alone through this valley
And lonely talk to Makers’ tally
In rooms more like tombs
That stink of some finale

I want to smell
Just a grape

But the vine has gone to vineyard
And the mind is now mindset
Even language won’t linger enough to upset

The rhythm of all things—we call “rhythmic”
Is anything but

I have tasted this before
With apricots jammed

Into a jar