the destroyer > text > Glenn Shaheen

EVERY USELESS BAUBLE

I hear singing and mistake it for screaming. There is no one
left to lead. If you follow my instructions I swear I'll

give you the antidote. I look at walls and I say, there is no
possible support there. We're running out of daylight. That is,

we're running out of the amount of daylight we each have
left. That's nothing you haven't heard before but I bet you

still ignore it. The air seems thinner. Not as though it kills
us, but that it doesn't give us as much life as before. Singing,

from the street, at this hour? I've always expected to be poor.
How can none of us be acting? I can ignore this, too. I'm sorry,

but there was never any antidote. I wish I could say the same
about the poison. All the sweets and they aren't enough. All

the notes and I can still hear the echoes. All the voices but
they each sound hungry. I believe in the absolute potential

of the human mind to believe its way out of any situation.
All the love. If only I was born ten years earlier, I say, then

I could have gotten everything I ever wanted out of life.
We just don't have the patience for hard times anymore.

Who burns all the goods none of us can afford anymore.
Please, is that the latch? I want somebody to come home.



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