something I made up
in the mirror of enmeshed languages
survived briefly then died
in my lifetime
it was poetry
it was art
it was the ineffable stench of a dying world
I speak two human languages
each one mirrored by its twin
and followed by its echo
each word an abstracted world dying when it is spoken
followed by dreams and repetition
in the morning I make up the bed
I chase out bodies from the hollow
of repetition and the echo of mirrors
that have looked deeply into my sleep
strangers roomed there
they brought news to me
ripe fruit of words fallen on the ground
ripe fruits of babel
before the despair of twilight
sets up the mirrors for another night
daytime goes into another fleeting poem
that leaves behind shadow and echo
reader don’t bother to learn these words
i am ishi the last speaker of this coiled wire
my mysterious languages buzz in mirrors
inside and outside your homes
some of them are in your dreams
narcissus doesn’t care where he sleeps
to vanishing mirrors polluted springs
absorbed by screens of forgetting