Consequent Realities

My love is studying
Anatomy and I
Am a dilettante resuscitating

The moaning anomie
Of postmillennial drudgework
Into daily veer

As Watts teenagers writhe
And jolt like the victims of electricity
We diminish them

To be, an earnest rage born
Of the absurd, a fit
Response to an irresponsible

Age, each morning’s paper
Soaked in a bloom
Of limbs, each ironing

Wretch wrought by the incidentals
Of a life unwittingly
Defended by a spectacle

Of death, I myself often
Pass this
Way with my hands

Over my eyes, hopelessly
Mired by the gross
Mitigation of routine

As the recursion of the
Spreadsheet self
Grows misty, harmonies

Invade, the Voyager
Ages in direct
Proportion to my own ungainly

Orbit and literature wreaks
Its unstoppable
Pageant of obituaries

On the American lunch
Break, my great
Grandfather was adopted

At the Battle of Wounded Knee
And I called him Bernie
And I swear we will not be confined

To pale little moments
Of exuberance or the inexhaustible
Shifting of these consequent

Realities, it is impossible
To measure how
Often the phantom

Limbs of memory return bent
On self-mutilation, nails
That aren’t there firmly dug

Into a palm that no
Longer exists, though it
Does, has, always

Will it seems, aligned
With the body’s bewildering
Pulse, the eye’s fiery

Recapitulation of difference
And who will stand
With us against the relativism

Of sensory input? When
Is it but constantly
That these assumptions threaten

To overtake us? Who deigns
To bring my love
And me something to wear we feel

Like getting out of bed.

-Chris Martin (no not that Chris Martin, this one)