They rise up like bubbles from the black silt
bottom of your oceanic mind: tendrils,
crustacean eggs intent on life malign,
effluence of demon anemones,
the slippery spirit spies of your gulf
stream, shadow eyes of the truant ebb tide.
They bide alignment, organize in time.
Soon, they’ll take away your Zune, your Xbox,
Your Gamecube. Rising like octopi shot
from their own ink, they pull dark horizons
behind; tentacling back down, they pulse, reach
for your ipod, MP3, DS, Diskman.
Run for your cell phone-iphone-bluetooth-
Blackberry! Text and talk, call for help!
They’re listening you, breathing you, the sole
Auditors of the Other End. While your
thumbs drum desperately in code, they’ll have hacked
your Facebook page, desecrated profile;
your picture swapped for the one where you look
like a bloodshot, droopy-eyed clown with seahorse
jaw; they scrawl on your wall a new message:
You is sick with conspiracy afoot,
Entombed abroad from all boundaries known
to him and strangled on his own entrails.
You has joined the group Bottom Feeders Fest.
You is a fan of the Baron Masoch.
For solace, click the pictures of your friends.
Figures slur to slithery Morlocks,
frames bleed to offal strewn tunnels that reek
of you. Weird idea – crawl through. Follow smell
and find the ads along the cavern walls
in lights, the ponzi lies, infected pies,
the jingles piped behind the cardboard props,
the blue lit carousels of computer
(no stanza break)
consoles. Wake in the tube light and Google
yourself. You’re a Wickipedia page:You is currently chronicling himself
On the road to hell. Go to Rate My Me:
“I suppose You is sort of okay but
all hung up on his own breathing and s**t,
and it’s like, what about my happiness?”
Now they have led you to their Coral Sea:
can’t recall what games you play or music
you like or who talks to you when you talk.
You can’t link to another site. Access denied.
Flee from the blue light on actual feet
through the subterranean wilderness,
the osmosis walls, root terminus, to
the bacterial banks of steaming black
broth in which all things germinate – there’s life
in the stream. Prepare to be eaten, drown
(you ought to know how, having long been dead).
Dive for the far side (what’s another fall?).
The rocks will pull your damaged arms ashore
and smash your teeth to dolorous silence
of experience, there, where time is stored.
You were all tooth, it seems, all bite, tongue stop,
and enamel; calcified masticant,
indiscriminate chewer, less flavor;
now savor being shattered on the shore,
dental shard relics, distracts of ego.
Try to recall what you were brought here for
(something from the sea, some nerve to retrieve).
Your mouth sits on a path. Your legs approach
a gate behind which stands a spring-fed well,
a stone bowl burbling earthy violet brew.
Before you hectors the odious host.
Throw them your ears to feast; throw your cock in
arc above the gathering fray to splash,
crow in the slaking bath while phantom fiends
jostle over your dross, then toss your hands
to guide that glutted pen a message sure
in dust as names across the strand are true:
undone pustules pissed on for new pursuits,
(no stanza break)
adieu. Cede integrity, noble bruise
of the purer pain, this late mastered wave.
