The feed is a sharpened icepick
chiseling the back of the eye.
a cataract of neon gossip,
ballistics reports, and stock ticker vomit
pumps directly into the frontal lobe.
you are not reading.
you are being entered
by a procession of strangers
wearing wire and static.
The brain, that pink meat in its wet box,
fritzes and sparks…
a bad circuit.
it can’t hold the shape of a single thought
before it’s bludgeoned by the next.
so it surrenders,
chooses a clean, stupid knife of a story,
swallows the hilt.
clutches a flag, a slogan, a trigger…
anything solid in the electric smear.
You try to sit.
not to float away.
to plant the spine like a rusted spike.
the breath rasps in,
a burglar in a dark house,
and out,
a spent shell casing.
again.
This is not gentle.
This is not lotus blossoms.
This is digging the bullet out with a hot knife
while the war still rages outside the window.
you are clearing a landing zone
in the center of the riot.
You are building a bunker from the marrow of your own bones.
It’s not peace.
It’s stability.
The difference between
being the nail
and being the hammer
in a world that only knows
how to pound.
