Deficit Omne Quod Nasciture
(everything that is born passes away)
Lights drip off the wall, fluorescent and fluid, setting the ground afire,
glass spider-webs cover screens; when they shatter, the shards will take flight.
Thirteen channels of static, forty of monochromatic bars, the rest but blackness
(and noise. oh, the terrible, terrible noise).
Birds a most curious shade of blue drop out of the sky and into the flames,
camera lenses lose focus; batteries melt in their cases; cables snap and dance.
Rain comes, but rain does not fall. Satellites soar to earth; an unplanned forecast
(a sputter of a stove, a flicker of a light, a bang, a bang, a bang).
Letters rise off their keys and declare a war on fingers,
Every button comes to life; rainbows drench streets; a thousand and one floors left; do not collect at go.
An orchestra of hissing kettles and whistling pots and pans set the scene
(for earless beings, they certainly know how to carry a tune).
Vessels of metal become one with the ocean; the ocean one with years of endeavour,
names slip off of tongues, memories out of minds, faces out of books.
A switch flips, and the world with it.
(the skeletons quiver under their screams. the back-ups, too! and their back-ups and their back-ups! stop staring, and fix this, goddammit!)
Trees sway in silence; pillars of solitude in the field of war,
somewhere a mother screams; they never printed the baby photos.
Men and women with flags on their breasts meet in candle-lit rooms, sweat dribbling into their dress shirts,
shouting and whispering in broken English; every word a spasm, every syllable fervid.
(their headphones only of white noise; after all, no phones to summon translators)
Companies watch with gaping mouths as their hopes and dreams (and stocks, mind you)
crash and burn and disappear; no speck of dust untouched
Decades of innovation lie in pools of murky greyness; host now to heels and dress shoes and knees.
(might as well have set them on fire, one of them wail. could've thrown me in for good measure)
Yellowed nails jab incessantly at buttons, but little do they know they've gone on strike,
figures of blemished flesh buzz around dead metal boxes, their mouths making noises with no meaning.
"Why is this happening?" one says to another, eyes tinged with red. "Is the world ending?"
(they live in fear of sleep for the numbers on their clocks have become a's and b's and q's)
Azure waters lap lazily on shores of pearly sand and lifeless smartphones,
a man crafts a makeshift guitar from a shoebox and rubber bands, hands yearning to be used.
The air hums with cacophonous strumming and raw baritone song.
(what are we now? he croons as a chorus of crows join him. oh, what are we now, what are we now?)
Comments