Plattenbau Persephone Praxis

The white noise is wasting me

A thousand spinning plates and nobody’s doing the dishes

Breathe in, the body rises exhale and the mind sinks

Cloying brains brought back from the brink

Another stimulant, another drink

With coffee-stained nerves and finger-stained keys

Furrowing digital fields, hands lashed to the plough

Let it be this; let it be now

Searching for meaning in the depths of the well

In the wiring inside, in the ringing of bells

The coding of elegance, the gatekeeping of eloquence

Where sparking switchboards dazzle and dance into deference

Where starry eyes meet light pollution

Where word of mouth meets gathered feet and dissolution

We’re each kept in the dark as the black-bagging begins

Kicked out on the street for their sins. I won’t be dragging

My feet any more than they’re dragged through the mud

Hands riddled with wages; fists dripping with blood

Why do the hungry pick all the food?

Why do the naked sew sequins, secluded in sweatshops?

Why do the capitalists blame those without jobs?

We’re all in, all in up to our necks

Horizons foreshortened with your nose to the ground

The wasting starts younger than birth

The coping narcotics bloom neglect

And a face in the dirt

A beating to sate latent hurt

And, after all, things can’t get worse

When it’s the third time this year

You’ve carried friends from a hearse

As if for hunger we yearn

As if to cauterise a burn

I gazed into the tubes to find reason

And cathode rays beamed through

My each, every nerve, Persephone

The natrescent glow of the after-dark Styx

And skin of white phosphorus

Leave me transfixed on the monitor

And I see you there

And squinting revealing these pixels depicting your fear

The marble as cold as objectification

No will of your own

Still passed between unfeeling hands

With head to the glass, I wept