Music’s dark window,
left open by another, long ago
slowly fills with light,
with magical thinking animals,
(beyond my wish to draw them close)
and a monk muttering nonsensical spells.

Some say settle for the winter,
let years go incomplete while you read Rilke
thousands of miles from problems.
Becoming gently cosmic,
my neighbours hear Africa for a few moments,
touch millions of years ago on screens.

What can you learn
by pushing a single button,
at the end of the process.

The factory workers fill with silicate,
the boss a single-cell suit,
catwalk diatoms making a white earth.

Totally pure, white-clad stores
buy workers at Ace Hardware
to combat a too-kind boss.

Smooth black humans
watch ceremonial robots put together
precise atomic components.

Troubled into tiny packets,
thoughts in me keep dry on the journey,
the tiny harmless ants that plague me.

I wish I were not the plague.
It’s the ultimate, white-person’s time
to go live in a cave and
ask the ancient philosopher.

Beautiful people make do in a darkened basement.

In the uncountable moments,
with sleepwalking followers’ words,
indifferent to indifference,
they scroll the screen
looking into their broken future.
Now all nows are about death