Untitled

Untitled # 17

All of you—no curse, no brand—
mere static clinging to the band,
burnt sugar ghosting through the wire,
a sweetness charred by its own fire.

Imagine me at dusk:
a scarecrow stitched from ambition,
my seams sewn with overdue notices
and the faint char of toast.

I do not chase gold.
I chase paper—
thin white sheets that might record
a name, a date, a brief insistence
in the great indifferent book.

I sign no law but what I am:
ink drawn from nerve and hologram,
authority without a name,
faceless, absolute, the same.

A lone convoy through signal wrecks,
chrome visions idling at my neck,
a barrel hum that soothes the street,
lullabies laid at asphalt’s feet.

The watchers gather, lit by glass,
thumb-priests at shrines that flicker past;
their neon verdicts flare, then fail.
I am not star but gravity’s tale—
the collapse that makes the stars recall
the weight that underwrites them all.

Still breathing—stitched by feral art,
unsponsored pulse, unbroken heart.
My throne resides where none is set—
no furniture, no silhouette.
Bread warms in ovens never shown.
I never left; I built the road
in flight, beneath my moving feet.

I drink no cup the chorus pours;
I work the seams where system leaks.

Return to screens that glow and scroll—
thumb-sized empires, weathered roles.

No quarrel held with ghosts that fade—
only the engines that parade
their endless print of hollow forms.

And yet—once, briefly—I believed them.
The glass. The count. The little red approvals.
I refreshed until the numbers felt like breath.
I called it air.

Final margin—clear, unformed:

I remain unlowered, unapproved,
unreplicated, unmoved—
a voice cut loose from spooling tape,
refusing every second shape,
walking off the reel’s command
into a corridor unmanned.

*18*