The Hidden Language of the Open Air

It stopped. "Oh memory, mortal enemy
Of my repose!" The final authority
Forgets the first. Politics, pornography,
All sorts of kindness and terror fill the air,
And all sorts of silliness along with them,
Same as it ever was, everybody knows,
Just as everybody knows it's getting worse.
Tsk, tsk. What are we to do with our lost selves
Floating around out there in culture's aether,
Nothing but the rumors of a race of souls
Made of the sticks and straw of contradictions
That burn or blow like tumbleweeds through our brains?
Are we the beings who speak of the beings
Who do the unspeakable things we speak of
To each other, the monsters of cruelty
Whose actions make up the most of the newscasts?
Are we the genius engineers of futures
Undreamt of by our ancestors, too busy
Dreaming of all the futures that never were,
Never will be, never even remembered?
Are we the boys forever meeting the girls,
Forever losing the boys, forever locked
In unions contracted by no one at all
But by our universal love of contracts?
We could rend our garments and wander, forlorn,
Rush out into the steep afternoon sunshine
Of a red desert autumn that doesn't care
How important or unimportant to us
Is the belief that it does or doesn't care.
We could stay at home and study page and screen,
Have a few beers, improve ourselves through gossip,
Fail to notice they're not really our voices
Returning us to us, whispering, "We're here."