POEM WITH NO CONTENT
No, not even under reconstruction, you’ve been deactivated. A breach of contract,
you’ve been erased from the others, as matter of fact, as a June bug in July. Hacked by
an intruder or a former self?—All your valuables are being held in a secret location. Like cockroaches dispersing in the light, the robo-phones are ringing off the hooks. You remember the phony-phone call you made to your sixth-grade crush, as if it were yesterday. The nearness of a voice, a breath. Rumor has it, all your missing parts are washed up along the beach, like wreckage from a plane crash. Your identity stolen by a mirror with no reflection. So was all the existential questioning really just about obtaining your pass-code?—Birth, marriage, divorce—when all is said and done, we shed many skins. But the King wants a public apology. The King wants you to fuck his ring. The King holds all your content. With a gun to your head, you wonder what Walmart-bot you’d let die for the return of your sacred materials, the archive, photos, memories. Yes, you did steal the creamers from the 7-11, but it didn’t feel like stealing,no price tag. The clerk shouted you out. You don’t know who your friends are. Scroll and scroll, looking for that little swath of self, something familiar, a fingernail of who you really are. We were made in the darkness where noise meets silence—a poem with no content.
