more silence would cancel

out the silence, until

the salt and pepper ants

from empty airwaves

became a kind of earworm

pretend there is an echo-

location that leads us

through the static hiss.

pretend that what's between

the lines is morning sick;

and that the streetlights

are in a fetal position forever,

unable to come to term.

daydreaming, we somniloquize;

each Shakespeare a deaf con

on "read" alert, left on "read" alert.

the clouds keep repeating

their self portrait, in a sort of dementia

that won't remember us, either.

you watched their anti-

evolution until "blue" was

a shape, always beside

itself in its geometry.

the foliage, like a blackboard

full of goodbye messages, chalked up

our nostrils with its erasure,

lecturing us on the virtues of the fall,

on moving along without a thought.

we pretend that

we are more than

a clenched fist

slowly leaking.

the sound almost

names itself

"liquid mortis",

but waits for

introductions,

and waits.

somewhere, a gaze

jaywalks through

a soul for the first time;

irises wane into

a gibbous of green

a chartreuse smile

flashing back, until

the colors invent

a new way to blind.

you'll draw a grid

on a scrapbook page

around the shrapnel of

your best shots, shot;

kodak moments tic-tac-toe'd,

divided by an algebra

where the x's and o's

always cancel, equal zero.

even Orwell would be

impressed, you think,

by the way we blackwhite shoeboxes,

in closets that could have

their own national anthem, with

hugs and kisses that could have

their own national anthem.