Personification is inevitable. It goes hand
-in-hand with        reinventing the wheel.
It reeks of misfortune. Gives a mess
its mass. Is why              slime
never forgets
its shapelessness,
while memory
foam must, in what doesn’t leave an impression.
My memory spins
our negative capabilities round,
round, like   a   record the dead
once held, as if listening were human
invention. Imagine someone who only touched
needle to vinyl. That generation who lost things
as memories, while I run from thunder,
huddle inside a train long gone
off the rails.
I call for an Uber.
A call I did not even place.

It’s all part of this new deal, for which I am the delay.
Oh, blissful ooze. Oh, quantum soldier
of fortune. There will be an app for judgment
that we can’t delete. You correct me: execution.
Let’s get into this. That sentencing
is quite empty. The sentence is doubling
down. Computerication is enviable. I’m pretty
beetles you’d like to stick a pin through
& then trash        can. Why care
for the shepherd tricked
into the slaughter pen. Let’s get it out in the open.
Herds. Human. Break. Bliss. Silo. Haze. Quantify looking forward.
To tomorrow, to block me from negative space.

Mince this tender. Say slime can be a crown
of onions & it cries into my eyes.
Say chop away at wing & antenna.

Say leave me alone with my own

                device.

Say I’ll refuse rubber shell
& puckered mutton. I try & reinvent

new spin. It’s a table with too
many hands in it. It’s communal

as plague. It’s that you were invented,
but came first. The wheel who’ll originate

the hands that spin it. Say they only reach
a single herd so milky & sweet. Say it grazes

from beneath the screen,
free of my cutting board,

where you’re filtering all
of my chemical elements,

until I’m a looted grave, a generic
greeting for the slaughterhouse &

day of rest. Say until I press
the air

like a switch
& ask:

                     when.

Say you keep all the bells
tolling & line every fence

in the schoolyard with birds of prey.
Say no car can escape into spacecraft

or credits.
& you cut

to


blank,

cursor
still
swarming
over

whatever dares                                next.