Terminal

Charred both retinas staring

at this lit screen.

Letters shimmering

like heat off asphalt.

Cursor ablink.

 

A building gutted by fire,

the site of the opening

of a letter bomb

is my head.

 

Acuity diminishing

foreground and background

become subtly woven,

hard to tease apart.

 

I must worry information

off the screen,

gather the tasteless, touchless,

silent syllables.

 

If a LEM module crawling

the dead-sea-floor of my skull

scooped a sample

would tests reveal that life

had once existed there?

 

Note: This poem was written when I was a gainfully employed cubicle dweller who shared the space with the great grey eye of a monitor with weak green neon letters and a cursor that pulsed as slowly as a medicated heart.

Some weeks–this week–life is so overwhelming that all I can do is run to the file of some past self and say, “Give me whatever ya got.” 

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