(no subject)

[silentjack]

There is a reckoning here.

Do I smother memory

as though it were a grease fire

threatening my apples,

rice, coffee, and tomatoes

and choke off the fuel

and destroy perfectly

replaceable components

or do I smother it like

a comatose patient, unaware

of a world outside the steeltrap

doors of his mind

and silence a silent

soul locked in a vise

of eternal physical peace?

How can I resist these flames,

this sleep, this heated iron slag

forming a crucible about me?

Why should I resist?

Winter is coming;

food is food.

Sleep is sleep.

A smoke-filled

room for hiber-

nation is still

adequately furnished

for those choked

off by the linger-

ing scents of unkillable

memory, of unknowable

time, of uncookable

beets flushed red

with the blood of knowing, of having known,

of having desired, of desiring similarly, of seeing

through tin can alleys and steel door allies

and I douse myself with embers of seeing,

of sweetness of remembering, of the permanence

of molten rock fastening me in place.