Half my thoughts still originate
in Paleolithic sub-Saharan
Africa, the other half in
turn-of-the-millennium
New York City. No wonder
any question I put to my-
self comes back garbled.
We used to rip the meat off
abandoned carcasses, break
open bones for their marrow,
unstarve ourselves with whatever
something more vicious had
killed. Now we live on dead
ideas, stripped from their bodies,
passed around and picked
clean. I feel their ghostly
fluctuations always. They are
pressing against each other
crowding trancelike voicelessly
back down into the mouth,
that gate from which
they might slip into open air
and be taken by the wind,
or else jump from fingertips
and live again—savage markings
on the cave wall of the page.
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