HOPE’S A REFUSAL


Hope’s a refusal to listen   as machines speak war
unto machines   the collapse of personal identity
a new spectatorship for fighting   a proper pile of nouns
soft enough to sleep on   abandoned rhetoric my blanket

apparition a profound relationship   infernal fiends
lurk at whose kerbs   time frame and location
crashes waiting to happen   flicker in flame scorched under-
carpet lost to secreted guilt   future memory is starshine

the night is full   sale shoppers on the down
pillowed with billowing bags of   trinkets and creative reflections
mirroring blank hatred   this poem flutes because
flute people live in it   a disingenuous crowd

they lisp the intercepted hieroglyph evacuated of passion
landscape moves on   the knife says the killing is done
its solid voice dispersed on the bleach sheet air
every word a discrete virus spread in computer code