Nightmare, Glasswork, Pointless Persecution

How I have carried these worms beneath my skin,
letting them bide and await the moment of daylight
when they emerge, explosive, surging subcutaneous
like flowers. Very small. Stem only. Fat.
The ground they grow on
made of delicious.

Somewhere in middle school
I hid a mirror with my face in it,
locked away in some obscure corner
where it grew to encompass the whole school.

Outside, around the enormous tree
I wound great spools of thought
traveling distances that rivaled
the Curiosity rover, still drifting
like a phantom mind on desert landscape.

triggered by a complex interplay
of policies that encouraged home ownership

based on the assumption that housing prices,
like the grand spirals of Fibonacci and Mandelbrot,
would continue to escalate.

Very innocently, I died
two or three times over the course
of several months, reborn
to Monday mornings and Friday nights.
The classroom was my cocoon.
From the paper husk of lives
I emerged to greet Death who smiled
seeing me, calling me over,
as credit tightened and international trade declined.

We had tea. Green. Lemon dissolved
in various states of rest and unrest. Liquid
sloshed around in beakers and glasses
frosted with lime, salt, sugar
colored like my old kindergarten.
I said it was fun to be here.
To meet him.

That day was maybe summer, maybe spring.
The sky with burning with blue, but the clouds
seemed grand and palatial. It snowed.
The trees lining avenues and age-cracked streets
wore red like a favorite sweater, like a suit,
like a wedding dress filling with air.

declines in credit availability and
damaged investor confidence had
a tremendous  impact on global
stock markets

Was it autumn? Perhaps the trees
knew something we didn’t, Death
or I. I thought the haze of red
and the haze of the sky
suited each other so smoothly:
the lips of two lovers coming together
a combination of excessive
borrowing, risky investments, and lack
of transparency:

compensation structures that prioritize
short-term deal flow over long-term
value creation

bank solvency at last
as one dissolves into water
and the other
into ash.

Mingle together then. Let oblivion
be your consummate partner, your
worst financial crisis since
the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Shed your forms and reverb. Let be
be finale of seem.