Retort

There's no escape from the panopticon
Of words' mercurial contradictions
Because language lacks the capacity
To be true without self contradiction,
Just as logic lacks the capacity
To be axiomatically complete.
You are a fragmentary phantasm
One brain generates without knowing why,
And you are the basin for all being,

Nothing outside of you, nothing but you:
Nothing is not you, the nothing that is,
The collection of accidents that sits
Down to breakfast, the breakfast, the kitchen,
The sun coming up, the plane going down,
The whiskey in the co-pilot's bloodstream,
The last dream of the fighter-jet pilot
Long left to doze through dull commercial routes,
The passengers dreaming lives they won't have,

The terrified dog whining at your feet,
Unable to quit trembling, unable
Not to worry you'll forget to drop scraps,
The radio, reporting on miners
In Ghana who risk their lives to pan gold,
Exposing themselves to spilled mercury
Trying to purify a few nuggets,
When their lives could be spared by a retort,
Which is some thing that captures mercury.