(no subject)

[archmardi]

on account of this string of sweet interger,
a parade of numerical columns,
coheres in our exercise of forming
a ledger book,
a patient clockwork of memory audit,
a confessional chain
officiating conversational shuffles
in a fluourescent lit department
that accounts for life
in its most minute detail

a restoration at the end of the road
for some redeeming figure
for that wordless dignity that gave
this stretch of age its sensibility

our most useful idioms are
largely descriptive,
scratching a surface of ceremonies
with their length, supplementing
an arithmetic order
a stable vector designing towards
the sum total
as its mechanical addition and subtraction
desire or erase desire
in some measure of human worth

in the margins of illegible
scribbles, these treatises of
historical worth are less an
ornament than that consistent
flight to defy any periodic order
and its cursive mark
runs against its destined future
and hope against hope
some indication of indignation

a secret history
stored in basement filing cabinets
those tremelous emotions.