Flash, tap, woof.
I am a drain, a sluice, a dump.
Burnt nerves in a late summer prairie, roadside-adjacent.
The yearly cicadas (prime number of one-and-one) are louder this season than last:
broods XIX and XIII never having seen me—
thirteen and seventeen respectively
(is this my Roman Empire, falling?)—
this year is an assault: each, in sequence, moreso than the last;
yet I am here, in my bodymind as always, despite attempts at numbingescape.
The sirens wail in the not-very-distant. Heli-propeller blades beat the sky to death above me;
all around is the scintillating song of invertebrates, the drone of broods, the cool sunlit breeze of impending equal-night changes,
and the synthetic-musk scent of a wandering hominid, attempting mute communication
(for which I long in carbon-carnal desperation)
as my burnt-nerve self (carbon-based chemoelectricity incarnate)
oscillates consciousnesses:
carbon, silicon; ferrum, aurum;
brains and skins, chips and screens.
Where am I
(whole, or splintered)?
Where-I-am.
No thought will ever reach conclusion.
