Since they found the Engines Under and switched 'em on permanent there just hasn't been much need for the wires. It all goes out on the waves now that our glands got the tuning down sharp.
So the wires all went cold and dead and still
and over time we almost didn't see them
draped between stripped trees and mausoleums.
The vestigial tissue of our outer neural network, webbed with moss,
once humming with energy and now?
Rubber rot, cringing in the wind and carrying
something else now, strange and cold.
Corinthian syllables bound tight and gasping.
I used to know someone who could get the old Receivers working, the ones locked in cases high up the Posts. She'd break the locks with her fist wrapped in rags, blowing orange puffs of rust carried on wind and sprinkling down on our heads, and she'd poke her head in and from down here she looked as if her head had been nailed into the Post, body hanging by blue harness straps and safety-chains.
She'd said if we could hear what she heard up there, we'd have torn the wires down years ago.
Last time we saw her go up, she almost spit,
"too late now"
and she never came back down.
Gathering moss and orange dust and shining detritus, just another locked case nailed up the Post.
Just another old Receiver hearing something we'd stop if we could only bear it.

Love,
the dead minotaur

Labels: vistas