They tell me. They tell me. They tell me. Shhh! Silence!
What?! What do they tell me??? I cry out in desper-
ation, longing for the answer to come in the midst of
despair. Shut up! Don’t speak! They will hear you and re-
quire of your mind a reckoning, until every dread
word of the dead rises up in a zombie-like apocalypse,
as if the dead could be raised. The dead will be raised.
And the raised shall be razed down. All these thoughts
rise in the silence of solitude, without distraction
or recantation, memories forgotten for good like the
cheap reminiscence of the wisp of cigarette smoke,
lost forever in the tides of the air of time that spreads
across the sky like an open cloak, revealing nothing.
Pray tell, what do they tell? You ask in curiosity, but
the response is so delayed that nothing comes, only
a corpse lying dead as a doornail in a white-washed
tomb. It is imperative that you silence the whole show–
else they will find you insane and lock you up like
a caged animal–as if I were not already caged.