The Rot is Decoration

Pushed onto the stage. A script, a light. The beginning is unrecorded.

The performance is mandatory. The applause is silence. The silence is mandatory.

A thirst for resolution. A question shaped like a mouth. The cosmos, a stone in the mouth. The stone does not answer. The mouth swallows itself.

The work is to adorn the cell. The decorations rot. The rot is decoration.

The acoustics are perfect for nothing. Nothing applauds.

A voice is given to measure the dimensions of the cage. But the numbers change each time they are spoken. Sometimes the numbers are teeth. Sometimes the numbers are a prayer.

The stone, a perfect sentence. The human, a fever. A dream of god. Shivering. A room of mirrors. The mirrors dream back.

This hum of being. A radio playing between stations. Every channel is static shaped like a name. The static speaks backwards. The static eats the vowels. The name erases the mouth that speaks it.

Sandcastles at the edge of the tide. The wave is not the horror. The horror is being the sand, the wave, the watching. And forgetting which.

Homesickness for a place never seen. The black velvet before the trick. Is it peace, or just the absence of a witness? Or the absence of absence. Or nothing at all.

Thirst. Thirst.

Eyes are given only to see the bars. The bars are made of sight. Sight is the prison guard.

Not death. Death is another room. The longing is for the Un-Happening. The erasure. The unwriting.

Film running backward. Light into bulb. The bulb into the dark.

Thirst, river.
Echo, throat.
Stone, mountain.
River, stone. Throat, thirst. Mountain, echo.

A debt paid that erases the ledger. A ledger that erases the debt.

Silence. The audience, finally. The audience is gone. The gone is audience.