i. Seven Questions
Are we obsolete or desolate?
obstinate or desperate?
Belligerents worn inveterate
by pensioned limbs accustomed
to endings? Fiends too comfortable
being numbed thin by fading
dope abuse smacks us up with? Walking
bruises making doors of our
own wounds? Are we shadows passing through
towns everyone knows, whose
names none pronounce? Insol(v)ent tourists
thrown out of whorehouses for
this wealth of experience, shaming
other guests by showing them
just how much better we do what their
amateur hosts refuse to?
ii. Never Test Them
Machines reconcile paradoxes
we wreck when, once in a while,
we check their work and do the math, when
somehow opposites attract,
one’s defenses come down and, looking
back, when not attacking our
Selves, we came closest to progress, then
for no reason retreated,
zeroes “more tolerance!” ended up
swallowing before its chant
spit out “facts” our egos disavowed,
only after the act war’s
declaration resounds with protests
no use in slowing down or
pausing their conquest, those victims lust’s
electric assassins rust.