Give me liberty or give me library books,

book cards stamped full of yesterdays!

Am I a teacher or a court stenographer

recording life’s paradoxes? It depends.

Have you learned anything from this fly

quietly dying, trapped in a spiderweb?

Or from T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland?

Pencil in your answers then stand by for

further instructions. If you could see fit

to transfer me out of solitary, I promise

to stop trying to escape whatever this is.

It’s dystopian family night, every night,

and I am buying! I wish things lasted,

but the menu constantly changes. I’m

afraid of meaning, so I rub my feet

on the carpet, sending little sparks

from my fingertip to your arm. That

shock, that tingle of recognition, is

the one thing I am trying to preserve.

Not leitmotifs, or chalk numerals on

a blackboard, but a stream of charged  

particles passed between two people,

okay? Ready, set, zap! Our bodies

two light bulbs transferring energy,

illuminating a colossus in the dark.