NaPoWriMo 2024 — Day 14

Posted byJennifer PatinoPosted inpoetryTags:, , , , , , , , , , , , ,



Reduction Efforts

Keep the muse to the unfed corner.
There’s a satiation happening
in another time loop.    The mirror lies.
The aura chasing camera lens
distorts to suit the skeptic.

There was a death continually
revisited that desensitized
a populace.   Once it’s believed
that a human can be a pulse,
there’s no living without
keeping time to a heartbeat.
        But it’s empty now.
        The hollow lines have
crowded the space, stuffed
the arteries with the saccharine,
and the truth is buried
along with the once-worshipped body.

How to make oneself smaller before
this angry god?   Short of starving
oneself, burrowing in the underworld,
or taking a permanent vow of silence,
the words etched in blood, ink, and
12pt font exist.   They’ve detached,
born ideas that bred ideas that killed
ideas that resurrected ideas
that were inhaled as inspiration,
draining resources, ectoplasmic
gunk that heavies the air, and like
the most powerful of the ghosts,
remain unseen.      Oh, but the path
holds residuals like the heart
holds onto loss.

Pick the lock on the box, prepare
for a special kind of serpentry,
dopamine trickery —
         it’s good,
         it’s good — Prove how much
you like it.    Center your engagement.
Preen the encasement.   It’s all they’ll
ever strain to see.

Experimental forms become garments
draping the corpses of masters,
the careless tread on words,
regurgitate cliché to gobble
it up again.     Kill or be filled.

Retainment?
Good luck with that.
Overstimulate yourself
into oblivion and keep updating us
because we’re always hungry.
The wisp in the darkness
sings the same soul song
and we stuff her with
forgiveness for all the artists
will never apologize for.

Let this be the last thing I ever write
before the jaws clamp down completely,
after nibbling on the bits
I threw out to keep them at bay.

          I want to roll around
with poetry in its grave.

Image by Alfred Grupstra from Pixabay


Published by Jennifer Patino

Poet in Michigan.

16 thoughts on “NaPoWriMo 2024 — Day 14”

Leave a comment