STILL LIFE

Standing in the bathroom by a porcelain brink
looking crosswise in the mirror over the sink
noticing how far back this reflection goes
hardly anybody left worth a damn even knows
and the rest dropped off what's beginning to look
like a long time ago now and by that I mean already
marked in the pages of this printed out book.

So we bought an old house and entered the game
of war against the mouse of our division and name
buried in a long story that tore through our lives
to say the least at a minimal pace and it thrives
to this day without having to come out and state it
point blank the rift from smooth talking beast
to furry four-pawed friend continues without end
possessing each and every one of us who made it.

To trigger each other's passages as if we're one and all
encoded to be held in thrall swaying to the music
of the alternating staves getting edited genetically
along the superconductive way so that frenetically
everyone of us tailor made to react accordingly
until the long slow choral dance unwittingly reflects
an endless regression of our mirrored family tree.

The centipede walks and twists and talks to itself
and begins to understand this procession while it's
still unfolding off the shelf spitting and winking
to slice and cut like a barbed wire razor positively
humming with electromagnetic power cultivated
by a molecular chain still on the verge of balancing
itself out as we go on the whole wide world tested
in a panic before a mirror in self portrait arrested.