by shaun lawton
(for kenji siratori)
a cabinet made of disparate parts and doctored into place
from a variety of well known source platforms including
a spinning host of digital forums blurred into shadows
of the rapidly growing flowers of constant humanthink
shed as a detritus and illuminated as a flash frozen constant
perceived as a pixelated storm of shimmering information
once considered to be moving yet now recognized as extant
more in the mold of a commemorative adornment placard
a sort of ribbon indicating at least the race had been entered
the ten line stanza itself came to be known as the pixel
because only after absorbing ten of them would a picture
begin to form from that minute collective of illumination
assembled and brought together into the shape of a brick
easily attached to others to sculpt the bastions of a fortress
so to speak providing the sanctity of making no statement
first and foremost for this is all that our forefathers and kin
shed their blood across the spattered pages of history for
in order to secure the holy right to just say nothing at all
while today it gets conjured in the name of every belief
codified and paraded about the block of the megalopolis
common variants of this meme replicate quite naturally
getting pushed out with ease by a weary host of ordinary
citizens dealing with the disease infecting the majority
on a much greater scale than could have been anticipated
considering the intersection of the ignorance of the masses
with the direct long term effect of a modern global pandemic
divided by a misunderstanding of the translation of specialized
fields for a target audience growing remoter by the minute
lucky for all that mysterious radio sources magnify the signal
it's through the accidental decoding of spontaneous noise events
we may uncover a signal harbored in a tender nest of gauze
left captured within a sub-dynamic of the industrial recording
a moment in time akin to a droplet of light appearing in the dark
when a diamond winks open with super lucent blue sky inside
as occurs when escaping from the undulating bowels of the earth
come crawling out of cavernous depths over steppes of stones
cooled to different temperatures by interlacing thermal vents
in other words since truth may be reflection of the light to come
we complete our circuitry knowing the transmission happened
if we have no correspondent or anyone to receive messages from
this dissolves in light of affirmation when faces arrive shining
achieving an abstract morphology into a gallery of rogue souls
sprung from being packed tight in oblivion of a sudden
swung up all smiles and frowns while swinging upside down
bringing a general sense of reassurance that there were people
just like us once upon a time long ago in some forgotten lands
and now we know that the mere fact they enjoyed language too
and passed it along to their children who figured out how to
teach us all how it's done then let the translation begin
