posted by Tim Nafziger on 08/03/08 at 06:24 PM

February 23, 2000

Information flows across our broken bodies

an anesthetic to the pain we thought we didn’t have.

Incorporated corps and professional profs

prove points we thought we’d never hear

let alone understand

A thousand thoughts on invisible wings

rise and fill the air with inaudible sound.

Underneath the mask and over buried treasure

we’re crying to be let out into the prison:

calling our names and carrying us

to rows of trees and houses lined up

in gloriously efficient strips of shiny obsession,

yards strewn with catnip.

Retching on bone we crawl over ourselves as

jolting jingles pull us into perfumed parties

full of tofu, bean and pasta casseroles

Yet dribbling through our consciousness

there remains a still small voice,

like water leaking from the room above.

This is a revision of a poem I wrote halfway through my first year of college.