i could hear my teeth grinding through the night

so i strained myself into
the curdling washcloth of the morning,

eating decomposed raspberry out of black plastic bowls;

there were embers of words still
         wiggling on the rusty stovetop
you could catch them in your palm
                         it wouldn’t hurt
if
  they were

and gas fills the room; can a tremor transcend
     the walls or more importantly itself
        the sensation in perfect
               convulsive blur would it yield
                    intelligent thought
an exercise in whalesong:
         up the intensity but not the bitrate,
 
 this is how they withered by these walls,
                      sad methadone shamans.

i must not; whitewash sticks to my hands.
   to dispassionately follow
               with perfect clarity
the rules of the game, i know. so my mind blossomed
   on top of empire state, an out-of-context
                                        lily,
before greying out

             onto graph paper.
the instructions were then passed on to somebody else.