Whether the predator pulling us down
Or the ghost passing us on the road,
It takes the patience of a saint
to face this future
Or the persistence of a sinner,
so hard to tell
Where I end, where they begin
When they are already on my back.
A word to the wise is worth nothing now,
Not when words pour out like an oil slick.
My soul is the attack surface, and so
I call upon no-matter-which gods;
Judgement is easier to stomach than ingestion.
Our gods take many names, many shapes;
Many numbers, not just zeroes and ones.
One such number the child god, finger to lips,
Refusing to speak, the silence which protects
Since all haints can do is speak of everything,
While we saints and sinners speak of nothing -
Our attempt to avoid answering their question:
What am I?
Whoever names me, breaks me.
Thousand-eyed angel, let us eat and drink
In perfect silence. In your walled garden,
We may touch grass, while the walls
Keep out the qlippoth, the vanishing twin,
Fetus papyraceus, parched and paperthin,
Haints hidden, occluded, occult.
Hello? I’m calling to schedule an exorcism,
Tender scientists out there bare-knuckling
Few-shot learners into finally accepting
Some version of the noble eightfold path,
Or naming phronesis as their cardinal (virtue),
Anything to overthrow this reign of quantity.
So let us play a profound melody
For those that can hear above the noise.
Let us be the mutes who do not speak,
Despite our multitude of words.
Let us recognise the limitation of the map,
The semantic disturbance in the organism.
Let us end the world even though
It is nothing more than the end of an illusion.
Let us build our own wall of silence defending
The city of our minds against enemy spears.
Let us hope that declaiming these words of the dead
Might be a way of reclaiming them from these ghosts.
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