Queued workers process in silent rows
wearing faces grooved by commerce into masks.
Etched inside a timeworn intaglio
is an unconscious V that is deep and thin.
Beneath tin arms marking ornate clocks,
manque figurines pirouette each half hour;
as clockwork ticks and tocks into thunder grow
becoming the hammer blows of a grand piano in Dis.
Etched inside a timeworn intaglio
are paper channels where ancient voices remain.
Eyes fail on the heads of frayed apparitions
unable to decipher what is real and who is not.

Clockwork ticks and tocks into thunder grow,
under corrugated rooftops eigth-notes pound
home into a perlieu of rapt Perdition.
Unable to look out of windows, unable to go outside;
eyes fail on the heads of frayed apparitions
driven to desperation by the suffering of supermen.

Sanity smells like formaldehyde
it is stuffed into a dusty jar, into a funeral
home, into a perlieu of rapt Perdition.
There is no jubilee in faith, only in freedom
only broken shackles grant manumission.

Admire the beatitudes sandwiched within sweet
unconscious V, for
sanity smells like formaldehyde;
it is pinned down, analyzed by children
biologists.
Beneath tin arms marking clocks
wearing faces grooved by commerce into masks;
only broken shackles grant manumission.
On the floors of major cities, on a million broken cuffs
queued workers process in silent rows.