they say, well, by the way, it seems a bit bright
in here, and ask,
how might you sleep
in a room with walls this white?—
let us, they beg, spread some comforting shadows
like spider-webs in otherwise uninhabited corners;
and although you have yet to utter a word
in either reproach or applause, regardless,
they still shall insist on seeing this through....but
only until that moment, that abrupt and all-too familiar
          moment,
just after the room has so relentlessly been rendered
too dark to view even the hand that’s before you;
it is then, and only then, that they shall end the senseless,
          confusing
               addition
of their soft and artificial
light.

and when they have finished
remodeling
Nature’s simple perfection,
will not some part of you—however remote—
remember your youthful but wise wish for
          a white room
and then move on—embittered—
unto your neighbor’s door?

2.
no, he will not confess to the foreseeing of this
or the rats’ arrival,
nor
even the swindle for that matter; indeed,
the screwball caught
the farm-boy sleeping
in a bed of sun-bleached hay,
whence he lied dreaming, carefully resigned
to a self-imposed fate: to not see
that the theatre had grown resoundingly vacant
and that what remained of the present audience
might applaud
without regards to the precision, or worth,
of his performance.

thus he refused, just once more, to turn on
the light,
to throw open the doors, the cabinets; in short,
he declined to read and interpret
the few and therefore holy signs that had been afforded him;
by name: the scattered refuse in the kitchen sink,
and the frantic, hunchbacked roaches hidden
about the oven’s pilot light
like a tribe of street people
greedily warming their hands
by the grace of an inner-city bonfire.

what might have become of him anyway
if, in fact, he had possessed the strength
to make full use of his sight? and, pray tell,
what remained of him that he could so much as fear
losing to venture with?—

what with his arms already locked into place, outstretched;
his back
straight and streaked
with reminders of hot submission;
stale rat droppings, souvenirs suffered from earlier days spent carelessly
in a similar room, perched upon his shoulder,
just grazing the fine, transparent hairs of his neck
like a platoon of dangling earrings
once believed to have been constructed of gold
but suddenly revealed
as merely a present
that remains to be fully opened.

3.
sure there are some holes to fill, the roof
has been rumored to leak,
and the mice, of course, will you blind
of sleep, like a nightlight
that shines sharp upon your face, relentless
‘ til dawn; yes, indeed,
it is dark, what with truly so few
windows—only mirrors—and with a fridge
filled with only hunger,
the cabinets as dry
          as can be expected
          in any wartime,
the closets chockfull
          of, as yet, unburied remains,
and the bed
          with rude ghosts....