ISLAND | ONLINE ONLY
unlike socrates
i know i know things
i know we broke the window on our way out
owing to entropy’s trap.
i know the lyrics to dido’s thank you
and that dusk is time to listen.
i know that mostly, a human
is not a thing with feathers.
i know an unreliable narrator
implies a hierarchy of memory
and i know the price
of hanoi rose chicken rice.
i know that pain
is alchemized in the amygdala
and if it is all just chemicals,
styles, stars, things that siphon neatly,
socrates or the stoics or dr phil
might scorn my resistance.
and when a chicken is plucked
of its most intimate tethers
it frenzies remembering.
in dido’s thank you she sings –
i don’t want to love again
it might change my memory
socrates thought love was the child
of poverty. he was wrong
but at least he knew it. since the end
of our generationally impoverished
conceptual child, itself impossibly born
from yellowed fingers, a wallet of fast cash,
furled chaos, burnt lips,
summer has ended.
yolk leaks slowly
from the broken window
and i have paid my rent in dido
to a featherless biped
when he comes to collect it
we both lament the cold.▼
Image: Yusuf Onuk - Pexels
If you liked this piece, please share it. And please consider donating or subscribing so that we can keep supporting writers and artists.