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.